Over the past decade, the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death (NCCD) has formulated
guidelines for the definition and interpretation of cell death from morphological, biochemical …

All life ends in death, but perhaps one of life's grander ironies is that it also depends on
death. Cell-intrinsic suicide pathways, termed programmed cell death (PCD), are crucial for …

Caspases are the primary drivers of apoptotic cell death, cleaving cellular proteins that are
critical for dismantling the dying cell. Initially translated as inactive zymogenic precursors …

Mitochondria play key roles in activating apoptosis in mammalian cells. Bcl-2 family
members regulate the release of proteins from the space between the mitochondrial inner …

Apoptosis is a process of programmed cell death that serves as a major mechanism for the
precise regulation of cell numbers, and as a defense mechanism to remove unwanted and …

The realization that alterations in inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) proteins are found in many
types of human cancer and are associated with chemoresistance, disease progression and …

Caspases, which are the executioners of apoptosis, comprise two distinct classes, the
initiators and the effectors. Although general structural features are shared between the …

The'inhibitor of apoptosis'(IAP) gene family, which was discovered less than a decade ago,
encodes a group of structurally related proteins that, in addition to their ability to suppress …

Establishing and maintaining homeostasis is critical to the well-being of an organism and is
determined by the balance of cell proliferation and death. Two genes that function together …

The number of cells in an organism is determined by regulating both cell proliferation and
cell death. Relatively few mechanisms have been identified that can modulate both of these …