An Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-specific Caspase Cascade in Apoptosis

Activation of caspase-12 from procaspase-12 is specifically induced by insult to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (Nakagawa, T., Zhu, H., Morishima, N., Li, E., Xu, J., Yankner, B. A., and Yuan, J. (2000) Nature 403, 98-103), yet the functional consequences of caspase-12 activation have been unclear. We have shown that recombinant caspase-12 specifically cleaves and activates procaspase-9 in cytosolic extracts. The activated caspase-9 catalyzes cleavage of procaspase-3, which is inhibitable by a caspase-9-specific inhibitor. Although cytochrome c released from mitochondria has been believed to be required for caspase-9 activation during apoptosis (Zou, H., Henzel, W. J., Liu, X., Lutschg, A., and Wang, X. (1997)…