‘Autophagic cell death’ is morpholo

‘Autophagic cell death’ is morphologically defined (especially by transmission electron
microscopy) as a type of cell death that occurs in the absence of chromatin condensation but
accompanied by massive autophagic vacuolization of the cytoplasm. In contrast to apoptotic
cells (whose clearance is ensured by engulfment and lysosomal degradation), cells that die with
an autophagic morphology have little or no association with phagocytes.40,41 Although the
expression ‘autophagic cell death’ is a linguistic invitation to believe that cell death is executed
by autophagy, the term simply describes cell death with autophagy.15,16,42 Thus far, involuting
Drosophila melanogaster salivary glands provide the only in vivo evidence that the
knockdown/knockout of genes required for autophagy truly reduces cell death.43 This may be
due to the limited number of studies that have investigated autophagic cell death in vivo,