Inhibition of apoptosis by a Bombyx mori gene.

An apoptosis-inhibiting component of silkworm hemolymph, isolated and characterized in our previous study, showed 95% N-terminal amino acid sequence homology with one of the 30K proteins, a group of structurally related proteins. The 30K protein was expressed in mammalian HEK293 cells and CHOK1 cells by transfection with 30Kc6. The expression of 30Kc6 inhibited apoptosis comparably to that of whole silkworm hemolymph, indicating that both intracellular expression and external supplementation inhibited apoptosis. The expression of 30Kc6 resulted in lower intracellular activity for caspase 3. However, the results of in vitro assay of caspase 3 show that the 30Kc6 protein does not inhibit caspase 3 activity. This indicates that the 30Kc6 protein inhibits the apoptosis by working in a further upstream event than caspase 3 activation.