Genetics of Apoptosis

the NGF-receptor, the death-associated protein kinase DAPK, and several proteins
of the NF-κB activation pathway (Feinstein et al., 1995; Hofmann and Tschopp,
1995). Nowadays, bioinformatic ‘domain descriptors’ for the death domain have
been deposited in the databases listed in Table 1, and it has become a common practice
to check experimentally found apoptosis regulators for death domains and also to use
the descriptors for the screening of the EST and genomic databases. A current death
domain census yields 32 human proteins, which are listed in Table 3 together with
their known interactors. A large body of data supports the idea that
heterodimerization is a general modus operandi for death domains and is not restricted
to the few cases listed above.

Table 3 Death-domain proteins

Domain abbreviations: CRD, Cys-rich domain; TM, transmembrane domain; DD,

death domain; DED, death effector domain; CARD, caspase recruitment domain; TIR,

FUNCTIONAL DOMAINS IN APOPTOSIS PROTEINS 79

toll/IL-1R domain; Rel, DNA-binding domain of NFκB family; Ank, ankyrin repeat

region; LRR, leucine-rich repeat region; Ig, immunoglobulin domain; Tsp,

thrombospondin domain; ZO1, ZO1/Unc-5 domain.