Apoptotic pathway activation from mitochondria and death receptors without caspase-3 cleavage in failing human myocardium: fragile balance of myocyte survival?
In the terminally failing human myocardium, the caspase cascade is partially activated in the presence of a consistent phenotype shift toward enhanced susceptibility to apoptosis. Although the system is still under a fragile control, the partial initiation of the apoptotic program may be of functional relevance also for the surviving cardiomyocytes.
Analyses of data sets that result in ambiguous phylogenetic hypotheses demand for methods, which do not only filter stochastic noise, but likewise allow to differentiate phylogenetic signal from systematic biases. Such methods can only rely on our findings regarding the evolution of the analyzed data. Analyses on independent data sets then are crucial to test the plausibility of the results. Our approach can easily be extended to genomic data, as well, whereby layers of quality assessment are set up applicable to phylogenetic reconstructions in general.