Shaham S, Horvitz H R
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, USA.
Genes Dev. 1996 Mar 1;10(5):578-91. doi: 10.1101/gad.10.5.578.
We developed a method for examining the effects of overexpressing cell-death-related genes in specific Caenorhabditis elegans neurons that normally live. Using this method, we demonstrated that the cell-death genes ced-3, ced-4, and ced-9 all can act cell autonomously to control programmed cell death. Our observations indicate further that not only the protective activity of ced-9 but also the killer activities of ced-3 and ced-4 are likely to be present in cells that normally live. We propose that both in C. elegans and in other organisms a competition between antagonistic protective and killer activities determines whether specific cells will live or die. Our results suggest a genetic pathway for programmed cell death in C. elegans in which ced-4 acts upstream of or in parallel to ced-3 and ced-9 negatively regulates the activity of ced-4.
我们开发了一种方法，用于检测在通常存活的特定秀丽隐杆线虫神经元中过表达细胞死亡相关基因的影响。使用这种方法，我们证明了细胞死亡基因ced-3、ced-4和ced-9都可以自主发挥作用来控制程序性细胞死亡。我们的观察结果进一步表明，不仅ced-9的保护活性，而且ced-3和ced-4的杀伤活性也可能存在于正常存活的细胞中。我们提出，在秀丽隐杆线虫和其他生物体中，拮抗的保护和杀伤活性之间的竞争决定了特定细胞是存活还是死亡。我们的结果表明了秀丽隐杆线虫程序性细胞死亡的遗传途径，其中ced-4在ced-3的上游起作用或与之平行，而ced-9负向调节ced-4的活性。
