Apoptotic machinery: the Bcl-2 proteins in the role of inspectors and superintendents

Abstrakt

Programmed cell death plays an integral role in a variety of biological events, e.g. morphogenesis, removal of unwanted or harmfull cells, tissue homeostasis etc. Members of Bcl-2 protein family have been described as the key regulators of the apoptotic process.

In this paper, besides reviewing the newest information in this field, we focused on how do they interact among each other and on the way they sense and influence the death signals from environment. Here, we compare Bcl-2 family to inspectors and superintendents since they supervise the manufacturing process of cell death and they determine whether the cell will die or it will resist and survive.