“…Indeed, although some of the biochemical properties of the proteasome are well characterized (Orlowski, 1990;Orlowski et al, 1993), the physiologic functions of this proteinase complex have been di cult to study due to the lack of speci®c inhibitors. Recently, a novel streptomyces metabolite, lactacystin, discovered on the basis of its ability to induce neurite outgrowth in the murine neuroblastoma cell line Neuro-2A (Katagiri et al, 1995;Fenteany et al, 1994;Fenteany and Schreiber, 1996), has emerged as a highly speci®c, irreversible inhibitor of 26S proteasome chymotrypsin-like and trypsin-like activity, without a ecting lysosomal and nonlysosomal cysteine proteases, cathepsin or calpain (Fenteany et al, 1995). The inhibitory e ect of lactacystin on ubiquitin/ATP-dependent degradation of several proteins has been demonstrated both in mammalian cells (Blagosklonny et al, 1996;Bies and Wol , 1997;Oda et al, 1996;Mimnaugh et al, 1996;Lee and Goldberg, 1996; Je ers et al, 1997; Whitesell et al, 1997) and in yeast .…”