Introduction to review series: Regulated necrosis programs in heart disease

Biologists have known for decades that certain cells die at specific times during the development of multicellular organisms, and such events contribute to morphogenesis. However, the underlying circuitries remained a mystery until the 1980s when a small network of genes that regulate the 131 developmental somatic cell deaths ( “programmed cell death”) in the hermaphrodite of the round worm Caenorhabditis elegans was identified (reviewed in [1]). These observations provided the first mechanistic evidence for the concept that cell death can be an actively-mediated and regulated process as opposed to merely a passive con sequence of damage to cellular components.
Source: Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology - Category: Cytology Authors: Source Type: research