Douglas R. Green St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee 38105, USA Correspondence: douglas.greenstjude.org DIFFERENT WAYS TO DIE

So far, we have mostly focused on apoptosis, also known as type I cell death.1 Along the way, we touched on other forms of cell death, in particular those most related to apoptosis—pyroptosis, caused by the action of caspase-1, -4, -5, or -11, and caspase-independent cell death, caused by mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP) when subsequent caspase activation is blocked. Two other major classes of cell death mainly concern us here: autophagic cell death (also called type II cell death) and necrosis (also called type III cell death). There is another type of cell death that may or may not fall into any of these categories—termed “mitotic catastrophe”—that we also consider in this review. Note that, although one pathway or type of cell death can appear to dominate in a particular setting, this might only be because it happens to be faster.

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN

Cells are highly complex, and any of …