Ancestral State Reconstruction of the Apoptosis Machinery in the Common Ancestor of Eukaryotes.

ABSTRACT: Apoptotic cell death is a type of eukaryotic cell death. In animals, it regulates development, is involved in cancer suppression, and causes cell death during pathological aging of neuronal cells in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. Mitochondrial apoptotic-like cell death, a form of primordial apoptosis, also occurs in unicellular organisms. Here, we ask the question why the apoptosis machinery has been acquired and maintained in unicellular organisms and attempt to answer it by performing ancestral state reconstruction. We found indications of an ancient evolutionary arms race between protomitochondria and host cells, leading to the establishment of the currently existing apoptotic pathways. According to this reconstruction, the ancestral protomitochondrial apoptosis machine

SUBMITTER: Klim J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5982838 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature