Control Of Apoptosis By Asymmetric Cell Division

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 07 Apr 2008 - 17:00 PDT

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Asymmetric cell division and apoptosis (programmed cell death) are two fundamental processes important for the development and function of multi-cellular organisms. Asymmetric cell division creates daughter cells of different fates, and this is critical for the generation of cellular diversity.

Apoptosis eliminates superfluous cells from the organism, and this is critical for cellular homeostasis. In this week's PLoS Biology Julia Hatzold and Barbara Conradt find that the processes of asymmetric cell division and apoptosis can be functionally linked. Specifically, they show that asymmetric cell division in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is mediated by a pathway involving three genes, dnj-11 MIDA1, ces-2 HLF and ces-1 Snail, that directly control the enzymatic machinery responsible for apoptosis. Interestingly, the role of this pathway in asymmetric cell division and the control of apoptosis might be evolutionarily conserved.

Furthermore, it might have an unexpected role in stem cell biology: the process of asymmetric cell division plays an essential role in the ability of stem cells to self renew and the mammalian counterparts of two components of the dnj-11 MIDA1, ces-2 HLF, ces-1 Snail pathway have recently been implicated in stem cell function. For this reason, they speculate that a dnj-11 MIDA1, ces-2 HLF, ces-1 Snail-like pathway might function in stem cells to coordinate self-renewal and apoptosis and, hence, the number of stem cells.

Control of apoptosis by asymmetric cell division
Hatzold J, Conradt B (2008)
PLoS Biol 6(4): e84. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060084
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