A million cells in our bodies die every second – they commit suicide by activating a process called apoptosis or other forms of programmed cell death. These mechanisms are essential for survival of the body as a whole and play critical roles in various developmental processes, the immune system, and cancer.
In this second edition of Douglas Green's essential book on cell death, Green retains the bottom-up approach of the first edition, starting with the enzymes that carry out the execution (caspases) and their cellular targets before examining the machinery that connects them to signals that cause cell death. He also describes the roles of cell death in development, neuronal selection, and the development of self-tolerance in the immune system, as well as how the body uses cell death to defend against cancer.
The new edition is fully updated to cover the many recent advances in our understanding of the death machinery and signals that control cell death. These include the mechanisms regulating necroptosis, mitophagy, and newly identified processes, such as ferroptosis. Cell Death will thus be of great interest to researchers actively working in the field, as well as biologists and undergraduates encountering the topic for the first time.
Foreword from the First Edition by Martin Raff
Preface from the First Edition
Foreword by Shigekazu Nagata
Preface
Introduction
1 A Matter of Life and Death
Caspases and Their Substrates
3 Caspase Activation and Inhibition
4 The Mitochondrial Pathway of Apoptosis, Part I: MOMP and Beyond
5 The Mitochondrial Pathway of Apoptosis, Part II: the BCL-2 Protein Family
6 The Death Receptor Pathway of Apoptosis
7 Inflammasomes and Other Caspase-Activation Platforms
8 Nonapoptotic Cell Death Pathways
9 The Burial: Clearance and Consequences
10 Cell Death in Development
11 Cell Death and Cancer
12 The Future of Death
Figure Credits
Additional Reading
Index
This book gracefully covers a wide variety of subjects and, in my opinion, distills our knowledge of cell death into an accessible text that is both enjoyable to read and appropriate for a broad audience.
Green covers more territory than many specialized books and does this by elimination of detail. Because of this approach, the book is a must read for students, clinicians, and experts in other fields wanting to learn more about cell death. Although the content may be very familiar to experts in the field, my suspicion is that they too will enjoy and benefit from reading this entertaining book. -Cell