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Exploitation And Regulation Of Apoptotic Caspases, Scott Eron

Doctoral Dissertations

Caspases are the cysteine proteases that govern apoptotic cell death. The regulation of these enzymes is critical in order to restrain their death-inducing capabilities until the appropriate moment. Infidelity of caspase regulation and activation underlies a plethora of human diseases ranging from cancer to neurodegeneration. This establishes a pressing need for comprehensive studies of the apoptotic caspases in order to understand all aspects of their regulation, activation, substrate preferences, structure, and function. A detailed structural view of caspase regulation would have lasting implications for future therapeutic avenues targeting caspase function or apoptosis. This dissertation chronicles caspase regulation by phosphorylation as …