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Worms, Life, and Death (Nobel Lecture)
Author(s) -
Horvitz H. Robert
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
chembiochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1439-7633
pISSN - 1439-4227
DOI - 10.1002/cbic.200300614
Subject(s) - caenorhabditis elegans , programmed cell death , gene , biology , cell , genetics , cell fate determination , model organism , microbiology and biotechnology , computational biology , apoptosis , transcription factor
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.