Cell Death and Its Different Modes: History of Understanding and Current Trends

Discussions about what is life continue to struggle; there are pros and cons for whether a virus is alive. However, an opposite thing – cell death – appears to be tantamount important and equally not-easygoing to define. Nevertheless, our current knowledge about eukaryotic cell death has made a long way and resulted in a fruitful outcome: starting from three types of cell death (type I, II and III which are mainly applicable to eukaryotic cells of organisms from the biological kingdom animalia) in 1970s, Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death has named already twelve cell death forms in 2018, including the above mentioned apoptosis, autophagy and necrosis among them. How the scientific attitude towards cellular demise evolved and various aspects of different cell death modes are reviewed in this article.