Gumienny T L, Lambie E, Hartwieg E, Horvitz H R, Hengartner M O
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11743, USA and Program in Genetics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
Development. 1999 Feb;126(5):1011-22. doi: 10.1242/dev.126.5.1011.
Development of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is highly reproducible and the fate of every somatic cell has been reported. We describe here a previously uncharacterized cell fate in C. elegans: we show that germ cells, which in hermaphrodites can differentiate into sperm and oocytes, also undergo apoptotic cell death. In adult hermaphrodites, over 300 germ cells die, using the same apoptotic execution machinery (ced-3, ced-4 and ced-9) as the previously described 131 somatic cell deaths. However, this machinery is activated by a distinct pathway, as loss of egl-1 function, which inhibits somatic cell death, does not affect germ cell apoptosis. Germ cell death requires ras/MAPK pathway activation and is used to maintain germline homeostasis. We suggest that apoptosis eliminates excess germ cells that acted as nurse cells to provide cytoplasmic components to maturing oocytes.
线虫秀丽隐杆线虫的发育具有高度可重复性，并且每个体细胞的命运都已有报道。我们在此描述秀丽隐杆线虫中一种先前未被表征的细胞命运：我们发现，在雌雄同体中可分化为精子和卵母细胞的生殖细胞，也会经历凋亡性细胞死亡。在成年雌雄同体中，超过300个生殖细胞死亡，其使用的凋亡执行机制（ced-3、ced-4和ced-9）与先前描述的131个体细胞死亡相同。然而，该机制是由一条不同的途径激活的，因为抑制体细胞死亡的egl-1功能丧失并不影响生殖细胞凋亡。生殖细胞死亡需要ras/MAPK途径激活，并用于维持生殖系稳态。我们认为，凋亡消除了作为滋养细胞为成熟卵母细胞提供细胞质成分的多余生殖细胞。
