Developmental and hypoxia-induced cell death share common ultrastructural and biochemical apoptotic features in the central nervous system.

Hypoxic insults during the perinatal period lead to motor and cognitive impairments that later appear during childhood. In the adult brain, hypoxic events often lead to necrotic neuronal death, depending on the region and intensity of the event. During development an active apoptotic cell death occurs and could be an important variable affecting the hypoxic insult outcome. In the present work we performed a comparative study, in a chick embryo model, of the phenotypes and molecular markers exhibited during developmental and hypoxic cell death (HxCD). Ultrastructural analysis of optic tectum cells of embryos subjected to hypoxia (8% O2, 60 min) revealed a clear apoptotic morphology that did not differ from the one exhibited during developmental cell death. Integrity of plasma membrane, condensation of chromatin in round well-defined bodies, and gradual shrinkage of the cell are all hallmarks of the apoptotic process and were present in both control and hypoxic cells. To elucidate if hypoxic and developmental cell deaths share a common mechanism we evaluated the activation of both intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic pathways. A basal cleavage of caspase-9 and cytochrome c release was observed by co-immunofluorescence in control embryos, but hypoxic insult significantly increased the incidence of this colocalization. Caspase-8 cleavage remained unchanged after the hypoxic insult, suggesting that the extrinsic pathway would not be involved in hypoxic death. We also observed a significant decrease of Akt activation immediately after hypoxia, possibly facilitating the later release of cytochrome c. In addition we analyzed the influence of retinal ganglion cells (RGC) in neuronal survival. Transection of RGC fibers at embryonic day (ED) 3 did not induce any change in developmental and HxCD at ED12. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that a hypoxic insult in the developing brain triggers the same apoptotic pathway as the active developmental death.