{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pbio.3001614","title":"Erebosis is a new type of cell death for tissue homeostasis in the Drosophila intestine","abstract":"Although there are over a dozen types of cell death known, there is clearly more to discover in this field. In this issue of PLOS Biology, erebosis is identified as a new type of cell death involved in tissue homeostasis of the adult Drosophila intestine. The adult Drosophila intestine, specifically the posterior midgut, has become an important model for stem cell research. The cell lineage is quite simple. An intestinal stem cell (ISC) divides asymmetrically to generate a new ISC and an enteroblast (EB). The EB differentiates either into an enterocyte (EC) or an enteroendocrine cell [1]. ECs are absorptive epithelial cells that make up most of the cells of the intestine. Old ECs are removed by cell death and replaced by new ECs due to ISC activity. The R4 region of the posterior midgut has the highest turnover rate and renews every 4 to 7 days [2]. It is commonly believed that old ECs are dying by apoptosis. However, this has never been convincingly demonstrated, and the published data are often inconsistent and contrary. For example, in 2 studies, apoptosis inhibition resulted in fewer ISC divisions [2,3], while in another study, it had no effect on ISC activity [4]. Genetic inactivation of critical apoptotic components (Reaper, Hid, Grim, the caspase Dronc, and the apoptosome component Dark) does also not affect ISC activity [4]. Apoptotic labeling does not reliably stain ECs. Only the use of very sensitive apoptotic assays made it possible to detect caspase activity in ECs [5-7]. However, that activity occurred transiently at a sublethal level and supposedly does not result in apoptosis. In short, the role of apoptosis for the homeostatic turnover of ECs remains unclear, and alternative mechanisms may exist.","journal":"PLoS Biology","year":2022,"id":278568,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9507,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":300680,"name":"Andreas Bergmann","orcid":"0000-0002-9134-871X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":8,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:28:47.357993Z","pmid":"35472045","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}