Clearing the Dead: Apoptotic Cell Sensing, Recognition, Engulfment, and Digestion
Open accessAbstract
Clearance of apoptotic cells is the final stage of programmed cell death. Uncleared corpses can become secondarily necrotic, promoting inflammation and autoimmunity. Remarkably, even in tissues with high cellular turnover, apoptotic cells are rarely seen because of efficient clearance mechanisms in healthy individuals. Recently, significant progress has been made in understanding the steps involved in prompt cell clearance in vivo. These include the sensing of corpses via "find me" signals, the recognition of corpses via "eat me" signals and their cognate receptors, the signaling pathways that regulate cytoskeletal rearrangement necessary for engulfment, and the responses of the phagocyte that keep cell clearance events "immunologically silent." This study focuses on our understanding of these steps.
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Both MEGF10 and MERTK function as engulfment receptors by recognizing eat-me signals such as phosphatidylserine presented in target debris.
“Both MEGF10 and MERTK function as engulfment receptors by recognizing “eat me signals”, such as phosphatidylserine presented in target debris13,14.”
From Astrocytes mediate synapse elimination through MEGF10 and MERTK pathways (2013) · cites this paper as [14]
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- Authors
- Hochreiter-Hufford, A., & Ravichandran, K. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- ORCID
- Ravichandran, K. S.
- Venue
- Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology
- Publisher
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
- Published
- 2013-01-01
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- a008748-a008748
- ISSN
- 1943-0264 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3579390
- OpenAlex
- W2115403023
- Cited by
- 503
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 55 · 2017: 44 · 2016: 51 · 2015: 58 · 2014: 50 · 2013: 16
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (T32AI007496)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Immunology › Phagocytosis and Immune Regulation
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Cell death mechanisms and regulation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Autophagy in Disease and Therapy
- Keywords
- efferocytosis, phagocytosis, find-me signals, eat-me signals, apoptotic cell recognition, engulfment, cytoskeletal rearrangement, immune tolerance, inflammation, autoimmunity, secondary necrosis
- MeSH terms
- Cell Movement, Chemotaxis, Cytoskeleton, Models, Biological, Neutrophils, Phagocytes, Phagocytosis, Receptors, Cell Surface, Signal Transduction, Apoptosis
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