Edited by: Neeraja Sankaran


SOLVING THE PUZZLE OF CELL DEATH: Stanley Korsemeyer reports the possibility that apoptosis is dependent on the production of oxygen free radicals in cells.
H.M. Hockenbery, Z.N. Oltvai, X.M. Yin, C.L. Milliman, S.J. Korsmeyer, "Bcl-2 functions in an antioxidant pathway to prevent apoptosis," Cell, 75:241-51, 1993. (Cited in 170 publications through February 1995)

Comments by Stanley J. Korsmeyer, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Washington University School of Medicine

The subject of apoptosis--physiological cell death--has emerged as a "hot" research topic in the past few years, with the number of publications increasing almost tenfold from 1991 to 1994 (R. Lewis, The Scientist, Feb. 6, 1995, page 15). Although scientists have identified certain hallmark patterns in the process of cell death, as well as the genes necessary for cell death, they contend that little is known about the biochemical events in the process.

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