Mitochondrial membrane depolarization in Drosophila apoptosis

Dear Editor

Apoptosis regulation in Drosophila has many parallels to vertebrate systems. However, one major difference has been the apparent lack of mitochondrial significance in Drosophila cell death. Several reports have suggested that mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization does not occur in Drosophila apoptosis and that there is no significant mitochondrial contribution to apoptosis in the fly.^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} However, these findings are based largely, if not exclusively, on studies in cultured S2 cells, which are phagocytic cells derived from embryonic macrophages/hemocytes.^{7, 8} The specialized nature of S2 cells prompted us to consider whether they are generally representative of Drosophila cells in their response to apoptotic stimuli. We addressed this question by examining the response of embryonic macrophages to apoptotic signals in situ in the embryo.

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