Apoptosis

Apoptosis (or programmed cell death) is one of the methods by which the cell cycle is regulated. It is in response to DNA in the cell being badly damaged and the p53 protein being activated, this starts a cascade of events that eventually leads to capases in the cells being activated. These capases can then cleave nuclear lamins, activate DNAase as well as cleave the cytoskeleton. Which leaves the cell detected from all neighbouring cells with no functioning DNA and misshapen; the cell is then engulfed but phagocytises and digested cleanly.Apoptosis can be initiated other ways however for example, in tadpoles a hormone is produced from the thyroid gland that causes apoptosis to occur in their tail when they are becoming an adult frog this causes the cells in the tail to die causing their tail to disappear.