Cell Death

Gerry Melino, PhD is Head of the Apoptosis and Cancer Laboratory, Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, UK, and Professor of Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rome-Tor Vergata. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cell Death and Differentiation as well as the Editor for the Molecular Biology and Genetics section of ELS. He also acts as Scientific Advisor for the Government of Ireland and Finland. His scientific interest focuses upon programmed cell death in neural and epidermal models. David Vaux, PhD is Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, La Trobe University, Australia. He obtained a PhD in molecular biology from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and worked at Stanford University before returning to Australia in 1993. In 2006 he moved to La Trobe University as a Federation Fellow. His field of research is apoptosis and a paper he published on apoptosis in Nature in 1988 has become the most highly cited primary paper from Australia in the past 25 years. He has been invited to give many seminars in apoptosis conferences (both national and international scientific meetings) including the Nobel Symposia on apoptosis in 2002. He sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cell Biology.

• Contributors. Preface.The Siren’s Song: This Death That Makes Life Live (Gerry Melino, Richard A Knight and Jean-Claude Ameisen).The Origin and Evolution of Programmed Cell Death (Jean Claude Ameisen).Cell Death in C. elegans (Ataman Sendoel and Michael O Hengartner).Caspases and Cell Death (Lorraine D Hernandez, Caroline Houde, Maarten Hoek, Brent Butts, Donald W Nicholson and Huseyin Mehmet).The Apoptosome: The Executioner of Mitochondria-mediated Apoptosis (Elisabetta Ferraro and Francesco Cecconi).Caspases, Substrates and Sequential Activation (John G Walsh and Seamus J Martin).Dismantling the Apoptotic Cell (Paula Deming and Sally Kornbluth).The BCL-2 Family Proteins – Key Regulators and Effectors of Apoptosis (David L Vaux).BH3-only Proteins (Lina Happo, Andreas Strasser and Clare L Scott).Mitochondrial Outer Membrane Permeabilization (Melissa J Parsons and Douglas R Green).Mitochondria Fusion and Fission (Giovanni Benard, Guihong Peng and Mariusz Karbowski).Death Receptors (Peter H Krammer and Inna N Lavrik).Death Receptors at the Molecular Level: Therapeutic Implications (Marion MacFarlane).Death Receptor-induced Necroptosis (Wim Declercq, Franky Van Herreweghe, Tom Vanden Berghe and Peter Vandenabeele).Inhibitor of Apoptosis (IAP) and BIR-containing Proteins (David L Vaux).Structures, Domains and Functions in Cell Death (DD, DED, CARD, PYD) (Hao Wu and Yu-Chih Lo).Structure and Function of IAP and Bcl-2 Proteins (Mark G Hinds, Peter D Mace and Catherine L Day).Engulfment of Apoptotic Cells and its Physiological Roles (Rikinari Hanayama, Masanori Miyanishi, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Jun Suzuki and Shigekazu Nagata).Autophagy (María Isabel Colombo and Hans-Uwe Simon).Autophagy in Nonmammalian Systems (Jahda H Hill and Eric H Baehrecke).Apoptosis: Regulatory Genes and Disease (James E Vince and John Silke).Caspases in Inflammation and Immunity (Philippe M LeBlanc and Maya Saleh).Immunity, Granzymes and Cell Killing (Nigel J Waterhouse, Olivia Susanto, Karin A Sedelies and Joseph A Trapani).P53 and Cell Death (Kamil Wolyniec, Sue Haupt and Ygal Haupt).Cornification of the Skin: A Non-apoptotic Cell Death Mechanism (E Candi, RA Knight and G Melino).Apoptosis: Inherited Disorders (Helen C Su and Michael J Lenardo).From Reactive Oxygen and Nitrogen Species to Therapy (Scott R McKercher, Tomohiro Nakamura and Stuart A Lipton).Microbial Inhibitors of Apoptosis (Georg Häcker).Drug Discovery in Apoptosis (Tom O’Brien and Vishva M Dixit).Subject Index.

"The book of Melino and Vaux is definitively a tremendous effort to summarize the vast amount of knowledge. It is divided into 29 chapters, which are all written by the leading experts in the field. Chapters range from basic biochemical mechanisms to therapy, from apoptosis to autophagy and from lower organisms to humans, and as such give a great overview of the research area." (Cell Death and Differentiation, December 2010) "Each chapter contains novel information ensuring that this book stands out among the numerous others centered on cell death and constitutes an extremely useful addition." (Cell Death and Disease, December 2010)