Caspases are a family of protease enzymes playing essential roles in programmed cell death. They are named caspases due to their specific cysteine protease activity – a cysteine in its active site nucleophilically attacks and cleaves a target protein only after an aspartic acid residue
Synonyms
cysteine-aspartic proteases, cysteine aspartases, cysteine-dependent aspartate-directed proteases