apoptotic process
Sign in to saveApoptosis (from ) is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms and in some eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms such as yeast. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, and mRNA decay. The average adult human loses 50 to 70 billion cells each day to apoptosis. For the average human child between 8 and 14 years old, each day the approximate loss is 20 to 30 billion cells.
AI overview
Apoptosis is a natural process in which cells in your body deliberately self-destruct through a series of internal chemical signals, resulting in characteristic changes like cell shrinkage and the breaking apart of the cell's DNA. This programmed cell death is essential for life—healthy adults lose between 50 and 70 billion cells daily through apoptosis, making it a normal and necessary part of how living organisms maintain themselves.
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Key facts
- Anatomy.Name
- Apoptosis
- Anatomy.Image
- Apoptosis DU145 cells mosaic.jpg
- Anatomy.Caption
- An etoposide-treated DU145 prostate cancer cell exploding into a cascade of apoptotic bodies. The sub images were extracted from a 61-hour time-lapse microscopy video, created using quantitative phase-contrast microscopy. The optical thickness is color-coded. With increasing thickness, color changes from gray to yellow, red, purple and finally black. />See the video at The Cell: An Image Library
- Anatomy.Width
- 306
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
33 sectionsContents
- Discovery and etymology
- Activation mechanisms
- Intrinsic pathway
- Extrinsic pathway
- TNF pathway
- Fas pathway
- Common components
- Caspases
- Caspase-independent apoptotic pathway
- Apoptosis model in amphibians
- Negative regulators of apoptosis
- Proteolytic caspase cascade: Killing the cell
- Apoptotic cell disassembly
- Removal of dead cells
- Pathway knock-outs
- Methods for distinguishing apoptotic from necrotic cells
- Implication in disease
- Defective pathways
- Dysregulation of p53
- Inhibition
- HeLa cell
- Treatments
- Hyperactive apoptosis
- Treatments
- HIV progression
- Viral infection
- Plants
- Caspase-independent apoptosis
- See also
- Explanatory footnotes
- Citations
- General bibliography
- External links
Apoptosis (from ) is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms and in some eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms such as yeast. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, and mRNA decay. The average adult human loses 50 to 70 billion cells each day to apoptosis. For the average human child between 8 and 14 years old, each day the approximate loss is 20 to 30 billion cells.
In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism's life cycle. For example, the separation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the digits undergo a form of apoptosis that is genetically determined. Unlike necrosis, apoptosis produces cell fragments called apoptotic bodies that phagocytes are able to engulf and remove before the contents of the cell can spill out onto surrounding cells and cause damage to them.