Abstract.
Ceramide has been reported to induce typical apoptotic changes in nuclei incubated in a cell-free system, and that the addition of ceramide bypasses the requirement for mitochondria. Here, we explore the possible pathways by which ceramide induces apoptosis either in intact cells or in a cell-free system which we have developed. We found that in the cell-free system, C2-ceramide is not able to induce apoptosis in nuclei whereas cytochrome c does, but it is able to induce HeLa cells to undergo apoptosis. Ceramide is also not able to induce apoptosis when added into the cell-free system together with purified mitochondria. Further investigation showed that C2-ceramide at certain concentrations greatly increases nuclear apoptosis caused by cytochrome c in the cell-free system. From these results we conclude that the induction of apoptosis by ceramide may require intact cells in which some unknown signal transduction pathways are involved.
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Received 2 May 2000; accepted 22 May 2000
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Jiang, Z., Hong, X., Long, H. et al. Ceramides induce apoptosis in HeLa cells and enhance cytochrome c-induced apoptosis in Xenopus egg extracts . CMLS, Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 57, 1117–1125 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000748
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000748