Developmental and abnormal cell death in C. elegans.

Genetic analysis in Caenorhabditis elegans has identified several genes that function in normal developmental death as well as genes that can mutate to cause inappropriate cell death. The processes whereby some of these abnormal deaths occur depend on genes that participate in normal programmed cell death; others occur by an independent mechanism whereby mutation of members of a gene family leads to cell lysis. Molecular characterization of these 'death' genes in C. elegans is beginning to provide insight into the normal and aberrant mechanisms of cell death.