Like all eukaryotic organisms, plants possess an innate program for controlled cellular demise termed programmed cell death (PCD). Despite the functional conservation of PCD across broad evolutionary distances, an understanding of the molecular machinery underpinning this fundamental program in plants remains largely elusive. As in mammalian PCD, the regulation of plant PCD is critical to development, homeostasis, and proper responses to stress. Evidence is emerging that autophagy is key to the regulation of PCD in plants and that it can dictate the outcomes of PCD execution under various scenarios. Here, we provide a broad and comparative overview of PCD processes in plants, with an emphasis on stress-induced PCD. We also discuss the implications of the paradox that is functional conservation of apoptotic hallmarks in plants in the absence of core mammalian apoptosis regulators, what that means, and whether an equivalent form of death occurs in plants.

中文翻译：

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植物细胞的生与死

像所有真核生物一样，植物拥有一种先天的受控细胞死亡程序，称为程序性细胞死亡 (PCD)。尽管 PCD 在广泛的进化距离上具有功能保守性，但对支撑植物中这一基本程序的分子机制的理解在很大程度上仍然难以捉摸。与哺乳动物 PCD 一样，植物 PCD 的调节对于发育、体内平衡和对压力的适当反应至关重要。越来越多的证据表明，自噬是植物 PCD 调控的关键，它可以决定 PCD 在各种情况下的执行结果。在这里，我们提供了植物中 PCD 过程的广泛和比较概述，重点是应激诱导的 PCD。