Journal article

Differential targeting of prosurvival Bcl-2 proteins by their BH3-only ligands allows complementary apoptotic function

L Chen, SN Willis, A Wei, BJ Smith, JI Fletcher, MG Hinds, PM Colman, CL Day, JM Adams, DCS Huang

MOLECULAR CELL | CELL PRESS | Published : 2005

Abstract

Apoptosis is initiated when Bcl-2 and its prosurvival relatives are engaged by proapoptotic BH3-only proteins via interaction of its BH3 domain with a groove on the Bcl-2-like proteins. These interactions have been considered promiscuous, but our analysis of the affinity of eight BH3 peptides for five Bcl-2-like proteins has revealed that the interactions vary over 10,000-fold in affinity, and accordingly, only certain protein pairs associate inside cells. Bim and Puma potently engaged all the prosurvival proteins comparably. Bad, however, bound tightly to Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, and Bcl-w but only weakly to A1 and not to Mcl-1. Strikingly, Noxa bound only Mcl-1 and A1. In accord with their complemen..

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