Apoptosis and autophagy are two forms of programmed cell death that play important roles in the removal of unneeded and abnormal cells during animal development. While these two forms of programmed cell death are morphologically distinct, recent studies indicate that apoptotic and autophagic cell death utilize some common regulatory mechanisms. To identify genes that are associated with apoptot...

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the major pathogen of community-acquired pneumonia and one of the most common causes of death due to infectious diseases in industrialized countries. Lung epithelium lines the airways and constitutes the first line of innate defense against respiratory pathogens. Little is known about the molecular interaction of pneumococci with lung epithelial cells. Apoptosis of l...

There have been numerous published studies on the mechanisms of cell death, so far having established tens of different modes of cell death in the literature. A small number of these reported cell death modes are listed here as examples: necrosis, apoptosis, aponecrosis [1], netosis [2], necroptosis [2,3], parthanatos [4], entosis [5,6], methuosis [7], oncosis [8], paraptosis [9], anoikis [10],...

The inactivation of programmed cell death has profound effects not only on the development but also on the overall integrity of multicellular organisms. Beside developmental abnormalities, it may lead to tumorigenesis, autoimmunity, and other serious health problems. Deregulated apoptosis may also be the leading cause of cancer therapy chemoresistance. Caspase family of cysteinyl-proteases play...

The death of a cell can be defined as an irreversible loss of plasma membrane integrity and represents the final point in the cell life. There are three basic forms of cell death: necrosis (type III cell death), apoptosis (type I cell death) and autophagy (type II cell death). Until recently, the prevalent view was that cellular necrosis is the consequence of non-specific cell injury without un...

Bacterial infection triggers apoptosis and immunity by regulating the expression of caspases. In this article, we report two caspase-8 paralogs, termed ToCas8 -like, from an economically important teleost golden pompano ( Trachinotus ovatus ). Caspase-8 is a classic cysteine protease that essential for initiation execution critical regulator in initiating death receptor-induced programmed cell ...

Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is important in the development and homeostasis of metazoans. In the nematode C. elegans, four genes, egl-1, ced-9, ced-4, and ced-3, constitute the core pathway acting in all somatic programmed cell deaths. This pathway is evolutionarily conserved in humans. The BH3-only protein EGL-1 is transcriptionally upregulated in cells fated to undergo programmed cel...

Caspase activation has been frequently viewed as synonymous with programmed cell death (PCcD); however, accumulating evidence showed that there existing caspase-independent PCcD pathways displaying morphologies that are not fully consistent with classical apoptosis. In this article, we will focus on the most recent progresses of different models of PCcD independent of caspases activity. Since s...

Photoreceptor cell death is the terminal event in a variety of retinal disorders including age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and retinal detachment. Apoptosis has been thought to be the major form of cell death in these diseases, however accumulating evidence suggests that another pathway, programmed necrosis is also important. Recent studies have shown that, when caspase ...