During C. elegans development 131 somatic cells reproducibly undergo programmed cell death. Many of these 131 cells 'programmed to die' are the smaller daughter of a neuroblast that divides asymmetrically and die through apoptosis. To determine whether cell size impacts the ability of cells programmed to die to undergo apoptosis, we increased or decreased embryo size by RNA interference-mediated knock-down of the genes C27D9.1 or ima-3 , respectively. We found that in apoptosis-compromised genetic backgrounds, C27D9.1 ( RNAi ) enhances and ima-3 ( RNAi ) partially suppresses inappropriate survival of cells programmed to die. This supports the notion that in C. elegans embryos, an increase in cell size compromises and a decrease in cell size promotes the ability of cells programmed to die to undergo apoptosis.

Copyright: © 2025 by the authors.

在秀丽隐杆线虫（C. elegans）发育过程中，有131个体细胞会可重复地经历程序性细胞死亡。这些被编程为死亡的131个细胞中的许多是不对称分裂产生的较小的那个神经前体细胞的女儿细胞，并通过凋亡途径进行死亡。为了确定细胞大小是否会影响预定要死亡的细胞执行凋亡的能力，我们通过RNA干扰介导的敲低C27D9.1或ima-3基因的方法来增加或减少胚胎大小。我们发现，在凋亡受损的遗传背景下，敲低C27D9.1（RNAi）增强了不应生存细胞的存活，而敲低ima-3（RNAi）部分抑制了这些预定要死亡的细胞的非正常存活。这支持了在线虫胚胎中，增加细胞大小会削弱并减小细胞大小会促进预定要死亡的细胞执行凋亡的能力这一观点。

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