Extracellular caspase-3 release has previously been described in the intestine and in the case of E. coli infection, it degrades tight junction proteins that are susceptible to cleavage through their caspase-3 motifs, resulting in reduced intestinal epithelial integrity (Hentze et al., 2001; Bojarski et al., 2004; Chin et al., 2006). The gene discussed is CASP3; the disease is escherichia coli infection.