Programmed cell death: beyond the frontiers of science (original) (raw)

Programmed Cell Death (PCD) is an emerging topic contributing actively to basic biology, and in the near future, we could expect practical applications improving human health and the productivity of our crops. Current results relate this complex and paradoxical process with the physiological development, stress response and diseases of plants and animals. With the aim of improving the exchange as a starting point to future cooperation in the field of PCD, the International Cell Death Society (ICDS) and the European Cell Death Organization (ECDO) organized in Havana on February 24th the International Seminar Programmed Cell Death in Plants: a challenge to the new millennium, sponsored by the Tobacco Research Institute of Havana. To this historical meeting, the first co-organized by the two most important organizations on PCD, were invited recognized scientists from Italy, USA, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Cuba. Although the seminar was organized to deal with the basic aspects of cell death in plants, speeches referred frequently to animal models. Session chairs, Mauro Piacentini and Zahra Zakeri, presidents of ECDO and ICDS, respectively, guided thirty minute speeches of ten speakers. The opening words of Vladimir Andino, head of the Tobacco Research Institute of Havana, and Mauro Piacentini, were followed by the speech of Richard A Lockshin from the Department of Biological Science of St. John's University, USA. He dealt with the historical origins of PCD research [1]. According with his speech, cell death as a normal, physiological process was recognized in the 19 th Century. One hundred years later, many of these deaths (in animals) were described as programmed, deriving from the recognition that, in embryonic development and metamorphosis, cells died at predictable times and places. Thus the assumption was that cell death was genetic in origin, and not a random loss of control. Later, Kerr, Wyllie, and Currie [2] called attention to a common morphology of many cell deaths and coined the term "apoptosis" in order to assert its importance in homeostasis as opposite and equal to mitosis (Figure 1). Shortly thereafter, a group of researchers ultimately led by Horvitz [3] proved the existence of genes that controlled all cell deaths in the embryo of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Their research led rapidly to the identification of these genes. These included genes that could turn on or off the activation of death, genes that produced products that could kill cells, inhibitors of those products-activation of death often consisted of release from inhibition of death-and genes involved in the scavenging of the remnants of the dead cells. Two profound arguments developed from these discoveries: First, that all cells carried within them