Deadly dowry: how engulfment pathways promote cell killing

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

During the development of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans cell death occurs in a highly reproducible manner, and this is one of the reasons why the ‘worm’ has been a prime model for studies of this fundamental process. 1 Genetic analyses of C. elegans provided the first evidence that a conserved central pathway of cell death exists and resulted in the discovery of Apaf-1-like proteins and caspases. 2 , 3 , 4 Subsequent studies led to the model that cells programmed to die during C. elegans development undergo transcriptional upregulation of the BH3-only gene egl-1, and this leads to the cell-autonomous killing of these cells via the central apoptosis pathway. 1 Once dead, ‘cell corpses’ are engulfed by neighboring cells in a process that is mediated by two partially-redundant parallel pathways that are conserved as well. 5