What is Pan for in pan-caspase?
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.