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Apoptosis

Phagocytic docking without shocking

Nature volume 392, pages 442–443 (1998)Cite this article

Apoptosis, a programmed form of cell death central to health and disease, is both topical and tidy. Doomed cells are swiftly identified and engulfed by phagocytes. But what are the mechanisms concerned? Answers on two fronts come in the papers on pages 501 and of this issue by Wu and Horvitz1 and Devitt et al.2.

In normal tissues apoptosis was overlooked for many years because it is inconspicuous — intact dying cells are recognized, ingested and degraded beyond histological recognition by scavenger cells3. These can be neighbours acting as ‘semi-professional’ phagocytes or voracious experts of the macrophage line. Phagocyte recognition of ‘apoptotic self’ is also essential in protecting tissues from inflammatory injury due to leakage of noxious contents from dying cells4. During apoptosis these are safely packaged into membrane-bound bodies tagged with ‘eat me’ signals such as exposed phosphatidylserine5. However, there has been remarkably little study of how apoptotic cells reach their unmarked graves within phagocytes. Hence the value of the new work, on the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans1, and human cells2, respectively.

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Figure 1: A model of phagocyte engulfment of an apoptotic cell, which follows phagocyte recognition that the cell is to be destroyed.

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  1. the Division of Renal and Inflammatory Disease, University Hospital, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK

    John Savill

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Savill, J. Phagocytic docking without shocking. Nature 392, 442–443 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/33025

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