Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, has been a vibrant research topic for some time. But there has been little study of the process by which dying cells are cleared away — that is, how they are recognized, engulfed and degraded by phagocytes. Two studies (one involving the nematodeCaenorhabditis elegans, the other human cells) now implicate the CED-5 molecule in the cytoskeletal reorganization necessary for the engulfing cell to do its job, and the CD14 protein in the process of tethering apoptotic cells to phagocytes.
