FIND ARTICLE

MITOCHONDRIAL FAILURE IN CELL TRANSFORMATION

For many years mitochondria have been implicated in the process of carcinogenesis. At the beginning of 20th century Otto Warburg has started research focused on failure of oxadative metabolism in cancer cells. In his work he described disruption of respiration as typical for cancer cells. Warburgs discovery resulted in establishment of many projects focused on the role of mitochondria in cell transformation. Since that time multiple reasearch groups have reported mitochondria DNA mutations in majority types of cancer.

MITOCHONDRIA - AN APOPTOSIS INTEGRATORS

Supernumerary, old or damaged cells of multicellular organisms are eliminated by apoptosis – programmed cell death. Apoptosis is accompanied by series of characteristic morphological and biochemi- cal events. The cell activates a cascade of cysteine proteases – caspases, that digest target proteins. Nucleases are also activated, which together leads to irreversible cell damage within few hours. Mitochon- dria are the cell compartment that integrates signals from different apoptotic pathways activated by ischemia, heat shock or growth hormones depletion.

The Editorial Board
Andrzej Łukaszyk - przewodniczący, Zofia Bielańska-Osuchowska, Szczepan Biliński, Mieczysław Chorąży, Aleksander Koj, Włodzimierz Korochoda, Leszek Kuźnicki, Aleksandra Stojałowska, Lech Wojtczak

Editorial address:
Katedra i Zakład Histologii i Embriologii Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Poznaniu, ul. Święcickiego 6, 60-781 Poznań, tel. +48 61 8546453, fax. +48 61 8546440, email: mnowicki@ump.edu.pl

PBK Postępby biologi komórki