Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:3.1.22.1 (DNase II)
 429 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Apoptosis is often accompanied by the degradation of chromosomal DNA. Caspase-activated DNase (CAD) is an endonuclease that is activated in dying cells, whereas DNase II is present in the lysosomes of macrophages. Here, we show that CAD(-/-) thymocytes did not undergo apoptotic DNA degradation. But, when apoptotic cells were phagocytosed by macrophages, their DNA was degraded by DNase II. The thymus of DNase II(-/-)CAD(-/-) embryos contained many foci carrying undigested DNA and the cellularity was severely reduced due to a block in T cell development. The interferon-beta gene was strongly up-regulated in the thymus of DNase II(-/-)CAD(-/-) embryos, suggesting that when the DNA of apoptotic cells is left undigested, it can activate innate immunity leading to defects in thymic development.
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PMID:Impaired thymic development in mouse embryos deficient in apoptotic DNA degradation. 1252 36

Caspase-activated DNase (CAD) is a double-strand-specific endonuclease that is responsible for the cleavage of nucleosomal spacer regions and subsequent chromatin condensation during apoptosis. Given that several endonucleases (eg, DNase I, DNase II, and Endog) have been shown to regulate pathological cardiac hypertrophy, we questioned whether CAD, which is critical for the induction of DNA fragmentation, plays a pivotal role in pressure overload-elicited cardiac hypertrophy. A CAD-knockout mouse model was generated and subjected to aortic banding for 8 weeks. The extent of cardiac hypertrophy was evaluated by echocardiography and pathological and molecular analyses. Our results demonstrated that the disruption of CAD attenuated pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis, and cardiac dysfunction. Conversely, transgenic mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of CAD showed an aggravated cardiac hypertrophic response to chronic pressure overload. Mechanistically, we discovered that the expression and activation of mitogen-activated protein kinase-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 was significantly reduced in the CAD-knockout hearts compared with the control hearts; however, they were greatly increased in the CAD-overexpressing hearts after aortic banding. Similar results were observed in ex vivo cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes after treatment with angiotensin II for 48 hours. These data indicate that CAD functions as a necessary modulator of the hypertrophic response by regulating the mitogen-activated protein kinase-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 signaling pathway in the heart. Our study suggests that CAD might be a novel target for the treatment of pathological cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure.
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PMID:Novel role for caspase-activated DNase in the regulation of pathological cardiac hypertrophy. 2564 92