Expression of bcl-2 inhibits necrotic neural cell death.

Cell death has been described as either apoptotic, in which the cell actively participates, or necrotic, in which the cell is felt to be passive. The proto-oncogene bcl-2 has been shown to inhibit apoptosis in some hematopoietic and neural cells, by an unknown mechanism. We demonstrate that bcl-2 inhibits the necrosis of neural cells induced by glutathione depletion. This finding demonstrates that bcl-2 does not inhibit the cellular death program directly; rather, bcl-2 modulates a cellular process that leads to apoptosis under some conditions but necrosis under others.