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Bacterial pathogenesis: An angel of death fights infection

Nature Microbiology volume 1, Article number: 16012 (2016) Cite this article

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A host's own cell-death circuitry can be unleashed to combat infections by exploiting a tactic used by many pathogens.

Life is good, except when it's not. Just as eukaryotic cells are hard-wired to spawn daughters, they are also programmed to commit suicide. Organs are built and tissues are maintained by a combination of orchestrated cell proliferation and ablation. Indeed, the capacity of cells to die on cue is so critical to life that the suicide machinery is evolutionarily conserved1. A family of ‘executioner’ proteases, called caspases, is tightly regulated by multiple pro-life and pro-death factors whose interactions dictate whether a cell lives or dies. Suicide can be initiated when danger signals from outside or inside the cell are sensed by ‘extrinsic’ or ‘intrinsic’ components, respectively. Failure of this genetically programmed cell death pathway, also known as apoptosis, means that extraneous or damaged cells are not removed and cancerous tumours can develop. Deliberate cell death is also critical within the immune system, whether to eliminate inflammatory cells once an infection has been cleared or to deny intracellular pathogens a safe haven.

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Figure 1: Inducing apoptosis of infected cells.

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  1. Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Michele S. Swanson is at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-5620.,

    Michele S. Swanson

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  1. Michele S. Swanson
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Correspondence to Michele S. Swanson.

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Swanson, M. Bacterial pathogenesis: An angel of death fights infection. Nat Microbiol 1, 16012 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.12

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