(Medical Xpress)—Membrane fusion is a highly regulated event, both inside cells, and between them. From the moment a sperm first fuses with an egg, subsequent developmental events depend upon its proper control. Inside ...
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a β-herpesvirus that infects most of the world's population and poses a serious threat to human health. The constant exposure of HCMV to the innate immune system makes this virus evolve a ...
Oct 9, 2023
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A team of researchers from Genentech, Inc., the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, has found that cancerous tumor cells are able to survive attacks by repairing holes in their membranes ...
Metastatic cells occur in many forms of cancer. They originate in primary tumors and then break away and migrate. They travel through the tissues surrounding them, through blood vessels or lymphatic channels. Along the way, ...
Mar 8, 2022
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Leuven researchers led by professor Bart De Strooper (VIB-KU Leuven) have identified a new role for PARL, a protein linked to Parkinson's disease. In this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, ...
Jan 3, 2019
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Scientists from the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research identified the mechanisms by which the bacterial pathogen Clostridium difficile kills intestinal epithelial cells (IECs), thus destroying the protective mucosal ...
Nov 21, 2018
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Scientists at the University of Glasgow have discovered a process to trigger the death of cancer cells that could be more effective than current methods.
Aug 29, 2017
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New study results show for the first time how dying cells ensure that they will be replaced, and suggests an ingenious, related new approach to shrinking cancerous tumors. A research team from Rush University Medical Center ...
Jun 19, 2017
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Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been called "the perfect pathogen." These bacteria hijack human macrophages, persist inside the cells to evade immune destruction, and then prevent the macrophage from undergoing programmed ...
Feb 8, 2017
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Researchers have identified a new mechanism that the tumor suppressor protein p53 uses to trigger cell death via apoptosis and have shown how the process could be harnessed to kill cancer cells. St. Jude Children's Research ...
Jul 30, 2015
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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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