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Identifying and quantifying apoptosis: a growth industry in the face of death
Author(s) -
Alison Malcolm R.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
the journal of pathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.964
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1096-9896
pISSN - 0022-3417
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1096-9896(199906)188:2<117::aid-path330>3.0.co;2-r
Subject(s) - apoptosis , programmed cell death , biology , face (sociological concept) , computational biology , dna damage , microbiology and biotechnology , nucleotide , dna , biochemistry , gene , sociology , social science
Apoptosis remains one of the hottest topics in cell biology, and great strides are being made in unravelling the complex interplay between the various regulatory molecules, particularly between the mammalian homologues of the nematode Caenorhabdtis elegans death regulatory proteins Ced‐3, Ced‐4 and Ced‐9. Curiously, the relative merits of the seemingly simple methodologies to visualize and quantify apoptosis still provoke considerable debate. Many are based on the ability to detect DNA breaks by enzyme‐mediated addition of labelled nucleotides, but the capricious nature of many of the available labelling kits, combined with a lack of true specificity, continues to fuel the search for more reliable apoptosis ‘markers’. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.