Abstract

Cell death is ubiquitous in metazoans and involves the action of an evolutionarily conserved process known as programmed cell death or apoptosis. In Drosophila melanogaster, it is now uniquely possible to screen for genes that determine the fate — life or death — of any cell or population of cells during development and in the adult. This review describes these genetic approaches and the key insights into cell-death mechanisms that have been obtained, as well as the outstanding questions that these techniques can help to answer.

Author affiliations

1. Division of Biology, MC156-29, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
2. Department of Neurology, Brain Research Institute, The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

Correspondence to: Bruce A. Hay¹ Email: haybruce@caltech.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.