Related topics: cell death

Programmed cell death may be 1.8 billion years old

Apoptosis, often referred to as programmed cell death, is a fundamental process crucial to the growth and development of multicellular organisms. This process, or a primordial form of it, is also observed in single-celled ...

FRET-based biosensor visualizes execution of necroptosis in vivo

Necroptosis is a form of regulated cell death (RCD) similar to apoptosis, the most commonly studied type of RCD. In contrast to apoptosis, plasma membrane rupture in necroptotic cells occurs at early time points. For this ...

Understanding how autoactivation triggers cell death

Apoptosis is a process that causes cell death. It can go awry in cancer cells, sustaining the disease. Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have captured the structure of BAK, a protein that triggers apoptosis. ...

Coronaviruses can induce host cell apoptosis

A large team of researchers working at the University of Hong Kong has found that three major types of coronaviruses are able to induce cell apoptosis in infected hosts. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, ...

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Apoptosis

Apoptosis ( /ˌæpəˈtoʊsɪs/) is the process of programmed cell death (PCD) that may occur in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, and chromosomal DNA fragmentation. (See also Apoptosis DNA fragmentation.) Unlike necrosis, apoptosis produces cell fragments called apoptotic bodies that phagocytic cells are able to engulf and quickly remove before the contents of the cell can spill out onto surrounding cells and cause damage.

In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis, in general, confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For example, the differentiation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the fingers apoptose; the result is that the digits are separate. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day.

Research in and around apoptosis has increased substantially since the early 1990s. In addition to its importance as a biological phenomenon, defective apoptotic processes have been implicated in an extensive variety of diseases. Excessive apoptosis causes atrophy, whereas an insufficient amount results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, such as cancer.

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