Intrinsic apoptosis in erythrocytes

[billyfisher100]

Hi fellow cell biologists!

- With a lack of mitochondria, can red blood cells perform intrinsic apoptosis and do they have another way of generating cytochrome c to attach to a CARD domain and assemble the apoptosome?

Or are they dependent on killer lymphocytes to bind via the fas ligand and activate procaspase 8 or 10 in extrinsic apoptosis? Do red blood cells even have fas ligand receptors for this process?

Or is there an entirely different method for red blood cells?

Thanks

Billy

[JackBean]

I have no idea about this, but to my knowledge they are taken in the spleen and destroyed. Taking into account that they are alive only like 120 days, they probably do not need any kind of cell death.

[canalon]

Without nucleus, do erythrocytes (I assume you are talking about the human kind) have genes to activate the apoptosis process?

[billyfisher100]

Thanks very much for your responses. They do not have genes to activate release of cytochrome c (even then, Im not sure how they would without mitochondria. If they were to do that, they'd probably use Bax or Bak as enzyme linked receptors to kick of a MAP kinase phosphorylation cascade to signal it.