by CHRISTPHER CROCKETT
BLUE DEATH The roundworm C. elegans fluoresces blue at the moment of death. IMAGE/David Gems/UCL
Researchers have identified a key molecular pathway for animal death that may provide clues for better managing traumatic injury and disease in humans
Watching worms die may not sound particularly exciting, but what if when they kicked the bucket they started glowing blue? That’s what a team of biologists has observed in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. A blue “death wave” ripples down the worms’ bodies for up to six hours as the life drains out of them—a phenomenon that is yielding insights into how death spreads throughout an organism.
“Death actually propagates,” says David Gems, a biogerontologist at University College London (U.C.L.) and co-author of the study. “The presence of a dead cell triggers destruction in a neighboring cell.” Gems and his colleagues describe their findings in the July 23 edition of PLoS Biology.
The cascade of cell death in C. elegans rides a wave of calcium ions that travels through the worm from front to back. The influx of calcium into a cell triggers processes that dismantle cellular structures. Lysosomes—the waste-processing centers of cells—burst and “that’s when all hell breaks loose,” as Gems puts it. The lysosome eruptions cause the cell to digest itself. The calcium ions then jump to a neighboring cell and the death wave continues.
Scientific American for more
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