Symbiotic Origin of Apoptosis

Abstract

The progress of evolutionary biology has revealed that symbiosis played a basic role in the evolution of complex eukaryotic organisms, including humans. Mitochondria are actually simplified endosymbiotic bacteria currently playing the role of cellular organelles. Mitochondrial domestication occurred at the very beginning of eukaryotic evolution. Mitochondria have two different basic functions: they produce energy using oxidative respiration, and they initiate different forms of apoptotic programmed/regulated cell death. Apoptotic programmed cell death may have different cytological forms. Mechanisms of apoptotic programmed cell death exist even in the unicellular organisms, and they play a basic role in the development of complex multicellular organisms, such as fungi, green plants, and animals. Multicellularity was independently established many times among eukaryotes. There are indications that apoptotic programmed cell death is a trait required for the establishment of multicellularity. Regulated cell death is initiated by many different parallel biochemical pathways. It is generally accepted that apoptosis evolved during mitochondrial domestication. However, there are different hypothetical models of the origin of apoptosis. The phylogenetic studies of my group indicate that apoptosis probably evolved during an evolutionary arms race between host ancestral eukaryotic predators and ancestral prey mitochondria (named protomitochondria). Protomitochondrial prey produced many different toxins as a defense against predators. From these toxins evolved extant apoptotic factors. There are indications that aerobic respiration and apoptosis co-evolved and are functionally linked in extant organisms. Perturbations of apoptosis and oxidative respiration are frequently observed during neoplastic transition. Our group showed that perturbations of apoptosis in yeasts also cause perturbations of oxidative respiration.