Showing papers by "Yong-Keun Jung published in 1999"

Assignment of apoptotic protease activating factor-1 gene (APAF1) to human chromosome band 12q23 by fluorescence in situ hybridization.

Abstract: Apoptosis, an evolutionarily conserved and genetically regulated biological process, plays a critical role in the development and the regulation of tissue homeostasis of multicellular organisms (Thompson, 1995; Yuan, 1996). Three major proteins involved in apoptosis were determined from Caenorhabditis elegans: Ced-3, Ced-4 and Ced-9 (Yuan et al., 1993; Yuan and Horvitz, 1992; Hengartner et al., 1992). In 1997 the human Ced-4 homologue was identified as Apaf-1, apoptotic protease activating factor-1, and the gene (APAF1) was cloned (Zou et al., 1997). Apaf-1 is one of the proteins that trigger the activation of caspase-3. Upon release of cytochrome c from mitochondria and in the presence of dATP, Apaf-1 forms a complex with procaspase-9. In turn, the procaspase is cleaved into its active form, leading to the activation of caspase-3, the executioner of apoptosis (Li et al., 1997). Disturbance of the apoptotic mechanism is implicated in many human diseases, especially in cancer (Nicholson, 1996). In this paper, we localized APAF1 to human chromosome 12q23 by fluorescence in situ hybridization.