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A simple question (I could not find it on internet): What is Pan for in pan-caspase? Is it any different from the term 'caspase' ?

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    $\begingroup$ can you tell the context of that phrase? If in case of inhibitor it could mean that it inhibits all caspases. Similarly with antibodies: a pan-caspase antibody would bind to all caspases. $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG
    Jun 12, 2014 at 9:11
  • $\begingroup$ there is no specific context but i now realized that it is usually used as pan-caspase inhibitor in the articles i was looking at. just to be sure: can we then say that pan is the opposite of specific? $\endgroup$
    – ecagl
    Jun 13, 2014 at 12:20
  • $\begingroup$ yes you can say that.. but we generally use the term "caspase-x inhibitor", where x is that specific caspase $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG
    Jun 13, 2014 at 14:54

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The term pan, in my opinion, is perhaps one of the most vague that exists in science! I can partley answer this question (ironically as vague as the term pan) by referring you to the term pan-neuronal. A pan neuronally expressed genes has features, which include the expression of many "generic" genes required non-specifically for neuronal function, such as components of the synaptic vesicle machinery, so pan-neuronal genes are not neurone class specific (http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_specnervsys/specnervsys.html). So with that token pan-caspases are a term referring to a general caspase activity/function/structure and not a specific caspase type activity but I would welcome any corrections or edits to this response.

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Pan is referring to all. So a pan-caspase inhibitor is a molecule that inhibits all caspases indiscriminately.

Note that pan means all in Greek.

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