Apoptosis and clearance of dead cells is highly evolutionarily conserved from nematode to humans, which is crucial to the growth and development of multicellular organism. Fail to remove apoptotic cells often lead to homeostasis imbalance, fatal autoimmune diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Small ubiquitin-related modifiers (SUMOs) modification is a post-translational modification of ubiquitin proteins mediated by the sentrin-specific proteases (SENPs) family. SUMO modification is widely involved in many cellular biological process, and abnormal SUMO modification is also closely related to many major human diseases. Recent researches have revealed that SUMO modification event occurs during apoptosis and clearance of apoptotic cells, and plays an important role in the regulation of apoptotic signaling pathways. This review summarizes some recent progress in the revelation of regulatory mechanisms of these pathways and provides some potential researching hotpots of the SUMO modification regulation to apoptosis.

从线虫到人类，死亡细胞的凋亡和清除在进化上是高度保守的，这对多细胞生物的生长和发育至关重要。未能去除凋亡细胞通常会导致体内平衡失衡、致命的自身免疫性疾病和神经退行性疾病。小泛素相关修饰符 (SUMO) 修饰是由 sentrin 特异性蛋白酶 (SENP) 家族介导的泛素蛋白的翻译后修饰。SUMO 修饰广泛参与许多细胞生物学过程，异常 SUMO 修饰也与人类许多重大疾病密切相关。最近的研究表明，SUMO修饰事件发生在凋亡细胞的凋亡和清除过程中，在凋亡信号通路的调控中起重要作用。