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The insect caspases

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Abstract

Developmental and tissue homeostasis is a delicate balance between cell proliferation and cell death. The activation of caspases, a conserved family of cysteine proteases, is a main event in the initiation and execution of programmed cell death. While caspases have been characterized from many organisms, comparatively little is known about insect caspases. In Drosophila melanogaster, seven caspases have been characterized; three initiators and four effectors. In mosquitoes, several putative caspases have been identified in the genomes of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae. A small number of caspases have been identified in the Lepidoptera, the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. The availability of new insect genome sequences will provide a unique opportunity to examine the caspase family across an evolutionarily diverse phylum and will provide valuable insights into their function and regulation.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jerry Ericsson for helpful comments on this manuscript. This work was funded in part by a MSFHR fellowship to DC and grants from NSERC, CIHR, the Canada Research Chair program, and a MSFHR scholar award to CL.

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  1. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research, University of British Columbia, Rm 166, Burrard Building, St. Paul’s Hospital 1081 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1Y6, Canada

    Dawn M. Cooper & David J. Granville

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Carl Lowenberger

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Correspondence to Dawn M. Cooper.

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Cooper, D.M., Granville, D.J. & Lowenberger, C. The insect caspases. Apoptosis 14, 247–256 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10495-009-0322-1

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