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Article: Why do single-celled organisms commit suicide?
- Thread starter rpm
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Investigating why organisms die may seem rather macabre to most people. However, Dr Pierre Durand from the Evolutionary Medicine Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, together with his co-workers Armin Rashidi and Rick Michod from the University of Arizona made an unexpected discovery which is helping to unravel a perplexing phenomenon.
They found that programmed cell death (a biochemical process that sees the cell actively destroy itself) in a single-celled green alga can benefit other cells in the population, while dying passively can be harmful to other cells.
They found that programmed cell death (a biochemical process that sees the cell actively destroy itself) in a single-celled green alga can benefit other cells in the population, while dying passively can be harmful to other cells.