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Apoptosis (;〔 ((American Heritage Dictionary ))〕 from Ancient Greek ἀπό ''apo'', "by, from, of, since, than" and πτῶσις ''ptōsis'', "fall") is the process of programmed cell death that may occur in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, chromosomal DNA fragmentation, and global mRNA decay. In contrast to necrosis, which is a form of traumatic cell death that results from acute cellular injury, apoptosis is a highly regulated and controlled process that confers advantages during an organism's lifecycle. For example, the separation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the digits undergo apoptosis. Unlike necrosis, apoptosis produces cell fragments called apoptotic bodies that phagocytic cells are able to engulf and quickly remove before the contents of the cell can spill out onto surrounding cells and cause damage. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day. Research in and around apoptosis has increased substantially since the early 1990s. In addition to its importance as a biological phenomenon, defective apoptotic processes have been implicated in a wide variety of diseases. Excessive apoptosis causes atrophy, whereas an insufficient amount results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, such as cancer. Some factors like Fas receptor, caspases (C-cysteine rich, asp- aspartic acid moiety containing, ase – proteases) etc. promote apoptosis, while members of Bcl-2 inhibit apoptosis. ==Discovery and etymology== (詳細はKarl Vogt was first to describe the principle of apoptosis in 1842. In 1885, anatomist Walther Flemming delivered a more precise description of the process of programmed cell death. However, it was not until 1965 that the topic was resurrected. While studying tissues using electron microscopy, John Foxton Ross Kerr at University of Queensland was able to distinguish apoptosis from traumatic cell death. Following the publication of a paper describing the phenomenon, Kerr was invited to join Alastair R Currie, as well as Andrew Wyllie, who was Currie's graduate student, at University of Aberdeen. In 1972, the trio published a seminal article in the British Journal of Cancer. Kerr had initially used the term programmed cell necrosis, but in the article, the process of natural cell death was called ''apoptosis''. Kerr, Wyllie and Currie credited James Cormack, a professor of Greek language at University of Aberdeen, with suggesting the term apoptosis. Kerr received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize on March 14, 2000, for his description of apoptosis. He shared the prize with Boston biologist H. Robert Horvitz. For many years, the terms "apoptosis" and "programmed cell death" were not highly cited. What transformed cell death from obscurity to a major field of research were two things: the identification of components of the cell death control and effector mechanisms, and the linkage of abnormalities in cell death to human disease, in particular cancer. The 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Sydney Brenner, Horvitz and John E. Sulston for their work identifying genes that control apoptosis. The genes were identified by studies in the nematode ''C. elegans'' and these same genes function in humans for apoptosis. In Greek, apoptosis translates to the "dropping off" of petals or leaves from plants or trees. Cormack, professor of Greek language, reintroduced the term for medical use as it had a medical meaning for the Greeks over two thousand years before. Hippocrates used the term to mean "the falling off of the bones". Galen extended its meaning to "the dropping of the scabs". Cormack was no doubt aware of this usage when he suggested the name. Debate continues over the correct pronunciation, with opinion divided between a pronunciation with the second ''p'' silent ( 〔) and the second ''p'' pronounced (),〔〔(Webster.com dictionary entry )〕 as in the original Greek. In English, the ''p'' of the Greek ''-pt-'' consonant cluster is typically silent at the beginning of a word (e.g. pterodactyl, Ptolemy), but articulated when used in combining forms preceded by a vowel, as in helicopter or the orders of insects: diptera, lepidoptera, etc. In the original Kerr Wyllie and Currie paper, British Journal of Cancer, 1972 Aug;26(4):239-57, there is a footnote regarding the pronunciation: "We are most grateful to Professor James Cormack of the Department of Greek, University of Aberdeen, for suggesting this term. The word "apoptosis" () is used in Greek to describe the "dropping off" or "falling off" of petals from flowers, or leaves from trees. To show the derivation clearly, we propose that the stress should be on the penultimate syllable, the second half of the word being pronounced like "ptosis" (with the "p" silent), which comes from the same root "to fall", and is already used to describe the drooping of the upper eyelid." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Apoptosis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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