ABSTRACT
Apotosis or programmed cell death is a genetically programmed process that is essential for tissue homeostasis during human development and adult life. Its malfunctions or erroneous regulation may lead to serious pathological conditions like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, immunological problems etc. and is reviewed elsewhere in this book. In certain cases apoptosis is artificially induced by drugs to remove excess cells (e.g. cancer treatments). Characterised previously only by morphological criteria, the biochemical background of changes occuring during apoptosis (cell blebbing, chromatin condensation, apoptotic body formation, DNA degradation, proteolytic degradation etc.) have been more or less understood in the past ten years, though the fine details of both the apoptotic process and its regulation are still missing (Wyllie, 1997; Schwartz, 1993).
