Johnsen HL, Horvitz HR. Both the apoptotic suicide pathway and phagocytosis are required for a programmed cell death in Caenorhabditis elegans.
BMC Biol 2016;
14:39. [PMID:
27185172 PMCID:
PMC4867531 DOI:
10.1186/s12915-016-0262-5]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2016] [Accepted: 04/28/2016] [Indexed: 12/01/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
Programmed cell deaths in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans are generally considered suicides. Dying cells are engulfed by neighboring cells in a process of phagocytosis. To better understand the interaction between the engulfment and death processes, we analyzed B.al/rapaav cell death, which has been previously described as engulfment-dependent and hence as a possible murder.
Results
We found that B.al/rapaav is resistant to caspase-pathway activation: the caspase-mediated suicide pathway initiates the cell-death process but is insufficient to cause B.al/rapaav death without the subsequent assistance of engulfment. When the engulfing cell P12.pa is absent, other typically non-phagocytic cells can display cryptic engulfment potential and facilitate this death.
Conclusions
We term this death an “assisted suicide” and propose that assisted suicides likely occur in other organisms. The study of assisted suicides might provide insight into non-cell autonomous influences on cell death. Understanding the mechanism that causes B.al/rapaav to be resistant to activation of the caspase pathway might reveal the basis of differences in the sensitivity to apoptotic stimuli of tumor and normal cells, a key issue in the field of cancer therapeutics.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-016-0262-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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