When death was young: an ancestral apoptotic network in bacteria.
In this issue of Molecular Cell, Dwyer et al. (2012) characterize a RecA-dependent and ClpXP-regulated pathway that controls the acquisition of several apoptotic markers upon bactericidal treatment of prokaryotes, placing the hypothetical origin of apoptosis further downstream in evolution.
Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Didac
D
Carmona-Gutierrez
Guido
G
Kroemer
Frank
F
Madeo