Cells are continuously dying in our body due to infections, cell turnover, developmental processes, and other extrinsic stress, including radiation. In the context of inflammation and infections, cells can undergo various types of cell death, which can either be lytic, including necroptosis and pyroptosis or non-lytic like apoptosis.
Dying cells constitute a significant source of inflammation. While apoptosis is considered less inflammatory, the lytic cell death types lead to a fast release of inflammatory mediators into the environment. However, it becomes more apparent that these cell death types do not always come in one flavor. Various conditions elicit their simultaneous activation due to common regulators, e.g. caspase-8 and RIPK1, which are essential for apoptosis and necroptosis, and have recently been implicated in pyroptosis.
One strategy that the body has developed to avoid inflammation is the engulfment of dead cells. While efferocytosis, the process of engulfing apoptotic cells, has been investigated more thoroughly, strategies of the body dealing with other cell death types are less studied.
Despite the intensive investigation of pathways leading to the various types of cell death, our understanding of its interplay is still in its infancy. Recent reports demonstrate the simultaneous induction of different cell death types, for example, during infections. Here we would like to elucidate the dynamics and mechanisms of this interplay in more detail.
Another even less explored aspect in cell death is the body’s reaction to the different cell death types. Studies on the engulfment of apoptotic cells identified the process of efferocytosis as being sophisticated and complex, involving various organelles and signaling pathways, which still need to be investigated in detail. Even more obscure is the engulfment of cells undergoing cell death other than apoptosis, and the immune responses in the context of perturbed removal induced by the increased amount of cell corpses. Further research is needed to understand these processes and their inflammatory potential to the body.
Submission is open to articles (research articles, reviews, comments, minireviews) on topics covering, but not limited to, mechanistic insights into:
• Inflammatory pathways triggering cell death
• Simultaneous induction of diverse cell death pathways
• Immune responses to cell death
• Removal of dying cells (efferocytosis)
We also welcome submissions using systems biology approaches (such as proteomics) to investigate the topic of interest.
Keywords: Cell Death, Inflammation, Pyroptosis, Removal of dying cells
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
