Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists, 1994: HYPOTHESIS: APOPTOSIS CAUSED BY CYTOTOXINS REPRESENTS A DEFENSIVE RESPONSE THAT EVOLVED TO COMBAT INTRACELLULAR PATHOGENS

Abstract

1. Over 100 different agents have been shown, under certain circumstances, to cause apoptosis, a form of cell death with characteristic morphology. In most cases, the mechanism of cell death is likely to be the same, as expression of the cell death inhibitory gene bcl‐2 can frequently prevent apoptotic changes and/or delay cell death. 2. These observations raise the question of how and why cells detect these agents and why they respond by implementing the suicide mechanism that bcl‐2 can control. Our hypothesis is that apoptosis is used as an anti‐viral strategy, and that cells interpret any metabolic disturbance as evidence of infection by a virus and thereby kill themselves in response to ..