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UNICELLULAR programmed cell death and relatives could be the same as organismal death, but many authors thought that this idea did not pass the sniff test. However, surprising new findings have colored this discussion. http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcbc245/MCBC245PDFs/Jan31/Huettenbrenner2003.pdf View in LinkedIn

BIM-BAD-AND-BAX, ET AL. "Many regulators of apoptosis are located in the mitochondrion or in the mitochondrial inter-membrane space (caspases 2, 3, and 9, cytochrome c, Bcl-2, Bcl-XL, Bad, Bax, Bak, Bim, Smac, HtrA2, AIF). However, we do not find these or homologous components (except HtrA) in contemporary bacteria." http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcbc245/MCBC245PDFs/Jan31/Huettenbrenner2003.pdf View in LinkedIn

ADAPTED GENES. "Since evolution never invents new genes but plays variations on old themes by DNA mutations, it is not surprising, that some of the genes involved in metazoan death pathways apparently have evolved from homologues in unicellular organisms, where they originally had different functions." http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcbc245/MCBC245PDFs/Jan31/Huettenbrenner2003.pdf View in LinkedIn

COMMUNITIES OF CELLS NEEDED DEATH. "Together, these two mutually reinforcing views led to the initial acceptance of the idea that the evolutionary origin of genetic programs of cell suicide has been concomitant with the evolutionary origin of multicellular organisms." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

PREY THAT HUNTS FOR YOU. "Strategies allowing plasmids and bacteriophages to propagate in the bacterial colony involves various mechanisms that allow spreading from one bacteria to another. One of these strategies depends on the presence, in the infectious agents of genetic modules encoding a toxin and an antidote. In fact, most toxin/antidote modules that allow bacteria from a given species to kill other bacterial species are not encoded by the bacterial chromosome, but by plasmids that infect the bacteria.” http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

GRAVE DISAPPEARANCE. "Genetically regulated programmed cell death is a phenotype that is characterized by the rapid disappearance of the cell that is expressing it. In other words, genes that encode effectors of programmed cell death can be viewed as allowing a phenotype that is the grave of the genome that expresses them." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

PHAGE ARMS RACE. "In the prokaryote world, competition for environmental resources is not restricted to competition between different bacterial species. Infectious agents, such as plasmids and bacteriophage viruses, also compete with bacteria: in this case, it is the bacteria itself that is the resource, and the evolutionary arms race involves the spreading of the heterogeneous mobile genetic elements in the bacterial colony." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

PHENOTYPIC SELECTION. "Natural selection does not act directly on genes, but on the phenotypes they allow the cell that encodes them to achieve. Genetic mutation leads to genetic diversification, and hence to phenotypic diversity. Natural selection sanctioned by death is a process of competition between phenotypes whereby genomes allowing for poorly adapted phenotypes do not get transmitted into the next generation, while genomes that allow fitter phenotypes become selected. http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

LINEAR EXTENSION. "The ability to self-destruct may have simply evolved as a consequence of a capacity to kill others." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

UNICELLULAR AVOIDANCE. "Genetic programs allowing regulated cell suicide would have been obligatorily counterselected in single-celled organisms." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn