Western Blot analysis of Lane 1: A-549 cell, Lane 2: MCF7 cell, Lane 3: K-562 cell, Lane 4: HeLa cell, Lane 5: LO2 cell, Lane 6: mouse lung tissue, Lane 7: mouse liver tissue and Lane 8: rat liver tissue lysates with CASP9 monoclonal antibody (Cat # MAB21750).
This gene encodes a member of the cysteine-aspartic acid protease (caspase) family. Sequential activation of caspases plays a central role in the execution-phase of cell apoptosis. Caspases exist as inactive proenzymes which undergo proteolytic processing at conserved aspartic residues to produce two subunits, large and small, that dimerize to form the active enzyme. This protein is processed by caspase APAF1; this step is thought to be one of the earliest in the caspase activation cascade. Alternative splicing results in two transcript variants which encode different isoforms. [provided by RefSeq