Apoptosis is triggered many different ways, but they all ultimately activate enzymes known as caspases that disrupt a cell’s DNA, organelles, and cytoskeleton. Caspases also recruit other cells to eat the dying cell’s remains. Even after commencing this suicidal process, cells can recover through a recently discovered process dubbed anastasis. But if anastasis happens late in apoptosis, the surviving cells may carry major chromosomal scars and other genetic defects that can lead to malignancy.
In addition to apoptosis, scientists have proposed more than 20 other regulated forms of cell death. Increasingly, researchers find some of these other kinds of cell death are also reversible.
In entosis, one cell engulfs another living cell, which is then killed and digested by lysosomes. Sometimes engulfed cells survive, even proliferating within their cellular captor or escaping altogether.
Necroptosis is a programmed version of necrosis, a form of cell death linked with uncontrolled reactions to ...
