title: The Life and Death of a Plant Cell.
abstract: Like all eukaryotic organisms, plants possess an innate program for controlled cellular demise termed programmed cell death (PCD). Despite the functional conservation of PCD across broad evolutionary distances, an understanding of the molecular machinery underpinning this fundamental program in plants remains largely elusive. As in mammalian PCD, the regulation of plant PCD is critical to development, homeostasis, and proper responses to stress. Evidence is emerging that autophagy is key to the regulation of PCD in plants and that it can dictate the outcomes of PCD execution under various scenarios. Here, we provide a broad and comparative overview of PCD processes in plants, with an emphasis on stress-induced PCD. We also discuss the implications of the paradox that is functional conservation of apoptotic hallmarks in plants in the absence of core mammalian apoptosis regulators, what that means, and whether an equivalent form of death occurs in plants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706; email: kabbage@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kabbage
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706; email: kabbage@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kessens
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.
authors.forename: Lyric C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Bartholomay
authors.affiliation: Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia; email: b.williams@qut.edu.au.
authors.forename: Brett
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Williams
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis / Q000502:physiology*; D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D001343:Autophagy / Q000502:physiology*; D050260:Carbohydrate Metabolism; D059828:Plant Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D010944:Plants / Q000201:enzymology / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins; D010940:Plant Proteins
keywords: Bcl-2-associated athanogene; SQUAMOSA promoter-binding protein; apoptosis; autophagy; caspase; metacaspase; programmed cell death; resurrection plants; sugar metabolism; vacuolar processing enzyme