Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

How, exactly, do damaged or diseased cells “commit suicide” to protect the body?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email
structure of an animal cell/royroydeb (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From ScienceDaily:

Their research revealed how a set of molecules called inositol phosphates acts as an activating code, like the combination to a safe, to unleash the cell-killing mechanism of a molecule called MLKL. The activation triggers an “executioner domain” of the MLKL molecule to break down the integrity of the cell membrane and kill the cell. Paper.open access – Dan E. McNamara, Cole M. Dovey, Andrew T. Hale, Giovanni Quarato, Christy R. Grace, Cristina D. Guibao, Jonathan Diep, Amanda Nourse, Casey R. Cai, Hong Wu, Ravi C. Kalathur, Douglas R. Green, John D. York, Jan E. Carette, Tudor Moldoveanu. Direct Activation of Human MLKL by a Select Repertoire of Inositol Phosphate Metabolites. Cell Chemical Biology, 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2019.03.010 More.

Why this matters: Cancer cells avoid destruction by inhibiting this process (which is called necroptosis). And necroptosis happening when it shouldn’t “is linked to the damage from multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and tissue injury from blood flow loss.” Targeting these processes could be an avenue for treatment.

See also: Reproductive stem cells have system to fight off jumping genes

and

In addition to DNA., our cells have an instruction language written in sugar

Comments

Leave a Reply