Bruce Hay

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..These results have suggested that echinus functions in the pupal retina primarily to promote interommatidial cell death...

..We also discuss the significance of recent work showing that a number of key cell death activators also play nonapoptotic roles. We highlight opportunities and outstanding questions along the way...

..Finally, we highlight several challenges to implementing population replacement in the wild...

..This review describes these genetic approaches and the key insights into cell-death mechanisms that have been obtained, as well as the outstanding questions that these techniques can help to answer...

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..Our results demonstrate that multiple caspases and caspase regulators, likely acting at distinct points in time and space, are required for spermatid individualization, a nonapoptotic process...

..Because loss of DIAP1 is sufficient to promote caspase activation, these mechanisms should promote apoptosis...

..Therefore, diap2 may identify a point of convergence between apoptosis and immune signaling pathways...

..Deletion of mir-14 results in animals with increased levels of triacylglycerol and diacylglycerol, whereas increases in mir-14 copy number have the converse effect. We discuss possible relationships between these phenotypes...

..These selfish elements use microRNA-mediated silencing of a maternally expressed gene essential for embryogenesis, which is coupled with early zygotic expression of a rescuing transgene...

..We speculate that dying cells may communicate cell fate or behavior instructions to their neighbors in other contexts as well...

..Finally, we demonstrate that Ice participates in, but is not absolutely required for, the non-apoptotic process of spermatid differentiation...

..dBruce does not block the activity of the apical cell death caspase Dronc or the proapoptotic Bcl-2 family member Debcl/Drob-1/dBorg-1/Dbok. Together, these results argue that dBruce can regulate cell death at a novel point...

..This, together with the ability of Mst2 to rescue hippo mutant phenotypes, argues that Mst/Hippo proteins are tumor suppressors...

..Here we describe a protocol for identifying miRNAs that can act as cell death regulators. We also describe a simple protocol for testing roles for mRNAs identified as candidate miRNA targets using computational or other approaches...

..Our results suggest that Medea elements can drive population replacement under a wide range of conditions...

..The role of the pink1-parkin pathway in regulating mitochondrial function underscores the importance of mitochondrial dysfunction as a central mechanism of Parkinson's disease pathogenesis...

..Taken together, these findings indicate that in eye development spatial regulation of cell death and survival is integrated through a single intracellular pathway...

..These data demonstrate a novel function for IAPs and suggest that IAPs and Reaper-like proteins mutually control each other's abundance...

..We have used these flies to carry out a screen for mutations that suppress gamma-secretase activity and have identified a small chromosomal region that contains a gene or genes whose products may promote gamma-secretase activity...

..These observations reveal the molecular mechanisms of how DIAP1 recognizes Dronc, and more importantly, how the RHG proteins remove DIAP1-mediated ubiquitination of Dronc...

..This study revealed insights into mechanism of Dronc activation, and in conjunction with other observations, suggests diverse mechanisms for the activation of initiator caspases...

..These results suggest that caspase activation in insects follows a more primitive mechanism that may be the precursor to the caspase activation pathways in mammals...

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..Therefore, it is likely that successful completion of the proposed experiments will increase our understanding of how cell death is regulated in human health and disease. ..

..In addition this work is likely to provide insight into the mechanisms by which caspase activity, and the consequences of caspase activation, are regulated. ..

..Finally, we will also characterize the roles and mechanism of action of a second Drosophila lAP, DIAP2. ..

..Because the P element tags the site of insertion we can quickly identify the affected gene. ..