Date: 13th April 2010

Dr Markus Rehm’s team has had a paper accepted in the prestigious Journal of Cell Science entitled “Activity of protein kinase CK2 uncouples Bid cleavage from caspase-8 activation”. It has also been selected by the editorial team to be highlighted "in this issue" editorial section.

Millions of superfluous or damaged cells are eliminated in the human body every day. Many of these cells die in response to external proteins which initiate a cellular suicide program. Dr. Markus Rehm (RCSI Research Lecturer) and colleagues now describe an approach which allows the investigation of the signalling network which codes the death decision within individual living human cells. Using advanced biophotonic experimentation, Christian Hellwig and Dr. Agnieszka Ludwig-Galezowska thereby could describe a molecular mechanism that uncouples cell death initiation from cell death execution. This mechanism provides transient tolerance to external death-inducing proteins and may explain how immediate and potentially unwanted, excessive cell death can be avoided under physiological conditions.

The study will be published in the Journal of Cell Science on April 21st. The e-press online publication is available here