Worms, Life, and Death (Nobel Lecture)

The life versus death fate of a cell is decided by a genetic programme that controls cell death, as was discovered by studying Caenorhabditis elegans. The first two “killer genes” to be discovered were ced‐3 and ced‐4 , both of which must be functional for cell death to be executed. Another gene, ced‐9 , protects against cell death by interacting with ced‐4 and ced‐3 (see scheme). For most genes involved in controlling cell death in C. elegans there exists a corresponding human gene and such genes are evolutionarily well conserved.