What is apoptosis, and why is it important? Education and debate

Philosophers have spent many centuries searching for the meaning of life, but in recent decades cell biologists have become even more fascinated by the meaning of death. Apoptosis describes the orchestrated collapse of a cell characterised by membrane blebbing, cell shrinkage, condensation of chromatin, and fragmentation of DNA followed by rapid engulfment of the corpse by neighbouring cells. It is distinguished from death by necrosis by the absence of an associated inflammatory response. These observations were made by Kerr et al as early as 1972,1 but their importance was underestimated for many years. Today, however, apoptosis is implicated in biological processes ranging from embryogenesis to ageing, from normal tissue homoeostasis to many human diseases, and it has become one of the hottest fields of biomedical research.