The relationship between calpain and Alzheimers Disease Research Progress.docVIP

 PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 17 The relationship between calpain and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Progress [Keywords:] Alzheimer’s disease tau protein amyloid-β protein synthesis of apoptosis (literature type) Calpain is an intracellular Ca2-dependent hydrolysis cysteine protease family [1  2], the role of proteolytic enzymes by specific enzymes and proteins regulate a variety of functions, including signal transduction molecules and cytoskeletal proteins and so on, in cell activity, signal transduction, cytoskeleton structure and stability play a role. Calpain is widely distributed in the nervous system, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disease, clinical features of progressive dementia, manifested as intelligence, memory, orientation ability, reasoning and ability to judge the irreversible degeneration; the main pathological changes for a large number of β  amyloid protein (β  amyloid protein, Aβ ) deposition of the formation of neuritic plaques, hyperphosphorylation of tau protein aggregation formation of neurofibrillary tangles (neurofibrillary tangle, NFT ), and the selective loss of neurons. Recent studies indicate that calcium protease dysfunction in the pathogenesis of AD may play an important role. Calpain I on the structure, activity regulation as well as in AD, NFT and Aβ pathology in the role of the formation of a comprehensive overview. 1 Calpain / Calpastatin structure 1.1 The structure of calpain has been confirmed that calpain family members, 14 [3]. Calpain calpain Ⅰ and Ⅱ is the most studied two types of calcium protease super-family members, their main difference is that in vitro activated Ca2 required different concentrations of the latter purified state, the need to have the best mmol concentration of Ca2 Activity , while the former in the micro-molar concentrations of Ca2 you can have the best activity. Calpain 1 large subunit from the (80 kD) and a small subunit (30 kD) composed of heterodimers