Research on programmed cell death in plants is providing insight into the primordial mechanism of programmed cell death in all eukaryotes. Much of the attention in studies on animal programmed cell death has focused on determining the importance of signal proteases termed caspases. However, it has recently been shown that cell death can still occur even when the caspase cascade is blocked, reve...

During programmed cell death (PCD) apoptosis is controlled by many factors such as proteases. With no specific protease (s) known during PCD in the developing nervous system so far, we sought to determine if any specific protease (s) is involved in this process and therefore used different protease inhibitors during PCD (from embryonic day 6 to 10) in chick embryos. Among the inhibitors commerc...

Pletikos et al. (2014) demonstrate in this issue of Neuron that the human neocortex has an "hourglass" temporal gene expression pattern with robust and dynamic transcriptome differences during the prenatal and adolescent/adult periods. Similar changes are not observed in the nonhuman primate-is this what makes us human?

Cell death occurs in physiological conditions and as a result of injury or disease. Programmed cell death has an important role in the development and homeostasis of human tissue. Aberrant regulation of this process is thought to cause numerous diseases, including developmental disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and cancer. Apoptosis is the main type of programmed cell death and is well unde...

This paper describes a pilot study centred on the technology-enhanced self-development of competences in lifelong learning education carried out in the challenging context of the Association of Participants Àgora. The pilot study shows that the use of the TENCompetence infrastructure, i.e. in this case the Personal Development Planner tool, provides various kinds of benefits for adult participa...

One can gain appreciable insights to the present day status of the field of instructional technology (IT) from examining its early beginnings and the origins of current practice. Programmed Instruction (PI) was an integral factor in the evolution of the instructional design process, and serves as the foundation for the procedures in which IT professionals now engage for the development of effec...

C urrently there is much interest and excitement in the understanding of how cells undergo the process of apoptosis or programmed cell death. Understanding how, why, and when cells are instructed to die may provide insight into the aging process, autoimmune syndromes, degenerative diseases, and malignant transformation. This review focuses on the development of apoptosis and describes the proce...

Hox genes are crucial determinants of cell fates and of body morphology of animals; mutations affecting these genes result in abnormal patterns of programmed cell death. How Hox genes regulate programmed cell death is an important and poorly understood aspect of normal development. In the nematode C. elegans, the Hox gene mab-5 is required for the programmed cell deaths of two lineally related ...