ABSTRACT
Apoptosis involves multiple signaling pathways. The intrinsic signaling pathway is the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway, which is caused by a series of processes. First, the pro-apoptotic factors such as Bax are activated by signaling molecules and transfer to the mitochondrial outer membrane forming protein pores, thus the mitochondrial membrane permeability is affected, and then the downstream caspase-9 is activated and the apoptosis initiation is induced by releasing cytochrome C. In order to explore the apoptosis initiation activated by small molecules, the specific structural changes of Bax in apoptosis were studied. The results showed that there is a hydrophobic pocket structure near the C-terminal S184 of the Bax protein. This structure can be combined with certain small molecular substances specifically remove phosphorylation S184, and regulate Bax protein to promote apoptosis activity. At present, the nuclear magnetic structure of Bax protein has been obtained and the crystal structure has not been revealed. The eutectic structure formed by corresponding with other proteins in the Bcl-2 family has been resolved, which can be used to study the interactions between proteins and to understand the specific structural changes in the formation of heterologous dimers during apoptosis, site changes, etc. In this paper, the Bax protein structure resolved by nuclear magnetic structure was reviewed to learn the change of the sites in the induced apoptosis so as to promote the research on apoptosis initiation.