ASKI Signalosome: a Signaling Complex Essential for Cellular Stress Responses

Apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1 (ASK1) is a mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase kinase kinase that activates the JNK and p38 MAP kinase cascades. ASK1 has a broad range of biological activities including cell differentiation and stress-induced apoptosis. Recently, we have shown that endogenous ASK1 constitutively forms a high molecular mass complex, which we designate "ASK1 signalosome". Here we introduce this novel signaling complex as a key regulator of cell fate in response to oxidative stress.