Apoptosis: Orderly Dismantling

For this article, Nadia S. Halim interviewed Shigekazu Nagata, professor of genetics, Osaka University Medical School, Japan, coauthor of this Nature paper. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that this paper has been cited significantly more often than the average paper of the same type and age. M. Enari, H. Sakahira, H. Yokoyama, K. Okawa, A. Iwamatsu, and S. Nagata, "A caspase-activated DNase that degrades DNA during apoptosis, and its inhibitor ICAD," Nature, 391:43-50, January 1, 1998. (Cited in about 430 papers since publication) Apoptosis isn't like a bomb going off in a cell. On the contrary, it signals an orderly dismantling of the cell, which results in a quiet demise. For years scientists knew degradation of DNA in the nucleus was a hallmark of this process. But the identity of the nuclease involved was a mystery until a couple of years ago. Shigekazu Nagata defined some ...