Steller H
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
Science. 1995 Mar 10;267(5203):1445-9. doi: 10.1126/science.7878463.
Apoptosis is a morphologically distinct form of programmed cell death that plays a major role during development, homeostasis, and in many diseases including cancer, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and neurodegenerative disorders. Apoptosis occurs through the activation of a cell-intrinsic suicide program. The basic machinery to carry out apoptosis appears to be present in essentially all mammalian cells at all times, but the activation of the suicide program is regulated by many different signals that originate from both the intracellular and the extracellular milieu. Genetic studies in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster have led to the isolation of genes that are specifically required for the induction of programmed cell death. At least some components of the apoptotic program have been conserved among worms, insects, and vertebrates.
细胞凋亡是一种形态上独特的程序性细胞死亡形式，在发育、体内平衡以及包括癌症、获得性免疫缺陷综合征和神经退行性疾病在内的许多疾病中发挥着重要作用。细胞凋亡通过激活细胞内在的自杀程序而发生。执行细胞凋亡的基本机制似乎在所有哺乳动物细胞中随时都存在，但自杀程序的激活受来自细胞内和细胞外环境的许多不同信号调节。对线虫秀丽隐杆线虫和果蝇黑腹果蝇的遗传学研究已导致分离出诱导程序性细胞死亡所特需的基因。细胞凋亡程序的至少一些成分在蠕虫、昆虫和脊椎动物中是保守的。
