The morphology of apoptosis

Abstract

The concept of apoptotic cell death as an essential part of the development and life of complex organisms has been devised in different situations and tested from various angles. This review article discusses the morphological changes during death by apoptosis. In cells undergoing apoptosis, an intracellular signalling pathway operates cell autonomously to implement the death and disposal of the cell. The similarity of the biochemical events during apoptosis in different situations is reflected by a high uniformity of morphological changes in many situations of naturally occurring or experimentally induced cell death. The unifying concept of apoptosis has been derived from the observation of this morphological consistency of dying cells almost 30 years ago. Since then, we have learned much about the intracellular signalling in the apoptotic process and the molecular background has been delineated which guides the initiation of the morphological changes. Here, an attempt is made to present the current knowledge about the molecular events in the development of these morphological alterations and to place these changes in the context of apoptotic cell death.

Morpho-ultrastructural alterations in the salivary glands of semi-engorged Riphicephalus sanguineus s.l. females subjected to permethrin

“…The nuclear and nucleolar alterations observed in the treatment groups (206 ppm, 1031 ppm and 2062 ppm of permethrin) corroborate Kerr et al [31], who reported nuclear alterations in apoptotic cells, including fragmentation and enlargement of the nucleus, chromatin marginalization and fragmentation of the nucleolus, resulting from the biochemical and morphological alterations in the nucleus during apoptosis [29,[32][33][34][35][36]. Thus, considering the similarities between the nuclear [18] and nucleolar alterations found in this study, it can be inferred that the salivary glands of semi-engorged R. sanguineus s. l. females subjected to different concentrations of permethrin would also be undergoing the process described by Kerr et al [31]; i.e., apoptotic death.…”

Real‐Time Cellular Cytochrome C Monitoring through an Optical Microfiber: Enabled by a Silver‐Decorated Graphene Nanointerface

“…In the first 5 min after H 2 O 2 injection, the cell morphology was indistinguishable from that of healthy cells, indicating there was no obvious apoptosis. At 30 min, a few cells were observed to start severing attachments to other cells and the extracellular matrix, and to rounded up (Figure 6d), indicating that a few of the cells were dying 49, 50. At 60 min, a large number of cells with morphological signs of death appeared (Figure 7e).…”

Morphology and DNA degeneration during autoschizic cell death in bladder carcinoma T24 cells induced by ascorbate and menadione treatment

“…However, our previous work in conjunction with the current results demonstrates the presence of another type of cell death, autoschizis. Tables 4 and 5 summarize and compare some of the characteristics of necrosis, apoptosis, and autoschizis (Wyllie et al, 1980(Wyllie et al, , 1981Falcieri et al, 1994aFalcieri et al, , 1994bFalcieri et al, , 1996Gilloteaux et al, 2001aGilloteaux et al, , 2001bGilloteaux et al, , 2001cGilloteaux et al, , 2004Gilloteaux et al, , 2005Hacker, 2000). cytoskeletal damages also follow the initial superficial ones that include the nuclear architecture modification and start nucleolar segregation.…”