Month: September 2022

FIRST DEATH GENES. "Accordingly, if one believes that programmed cell death is an ubiquitous, highly conserved, and essential feature of most, or all, multicellular organisms, the question of the evolutionary origin of programmed cell death may benefit from being asked in the following way: when and how were genes first selected, that allowed the regulation of programmed cell death?" http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

THE TRANSITION POINT. "In other words, was there a period 'before' programmed cell death, in which cells died only 'from without', as a result of chance and environmental destruction, and a period 'after' programmed cell death, in which regulated self-destruction, the capacity to trigger premature death 'from within', became one of the intrinsic properties of the cells?" http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SINGLE OR MULTIPLE? "Did this frontier arise after the initial three billion years of evolution of single-celled organisms, at the time at which the first multicellular organisms emerged, or did this frontier arise in the kingdom of the single-celled organism, prior to the emergence of multicellular organisms?" http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

WIDE AND OLD. "Various forms of regulated programmed cell death have now been described in nine species of unicellular eukaryotes, belonging to four different branches whose phylogenic divergence is believed to range from around two to one billion years ago." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

GENETIC ORIGIN. "The identification of a regulated cell death program inducing an apoptotic phenotype in nine different single-celled eukaryote organisms that belong to four diverging branches of the eukaryote phylogenic tree provides a paradigm for a widespread role for programmed cell death in the control of cell survival, and raises the question of the origin and nature of the genes that may be involved in the execution and regulation of such a process." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

FIERCE SELECTION. "Evolutionary advantages conferred by such program of self-destruction could include the constant selection for the survival of the fittest cell in the single-celled eukaryote colony, optimal adaptation of the cell numbers to the environment, and tight regulation of cell cycle and cell differentiation in response to environmental changes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

ESCAPING EXTERNAL CONTROL. "Interestingly, the finding that a cell suicide program is operational in several unicellular eukaryote lineages explored to date support the seemingly paradoxical view that genetic mutations that would allow cells to escape environmental regulation of their suicide machinery may have become counterselected at the level of the colonies of these single-celled eukaryotes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SINGLE CELLED ORIGINS. "Programmed cell death is an ancient and conserved feature in most, if not all, single-celled eukaryote organisms, and that programmed cell death emerged at the time - or prior to the time - of the emergence of the first eukaryotes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

ADVANTAGE OF DEATH. "Through a radical change in perspective, we have now seen that the emergence of programmed cell death can be envisioned as resulting from a selective spreading advantage conferred by genetic modules regulating cell death and survival to the genomes able to express them." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SELFISH TO ALTRUISTIC. "It is interesting to think that the genetic modules that are now involved in the regulation of what we call 'altruistic' regulated programmed cell death may have initially emerged and become selected as 'selfish genetic modules', for the sole reason that encoding an executioner and an inhibitor of the executioner just made them good at propagating themselves." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn