Blue Wave of Death Observed in Worm Could Point to Ways to Delay Dying

Death comes in the form of a blue wave which ends life as it ripples from cell to cell until the whole organism is deceased, according to a new paper in the journal PLOS Biology.

The process of death as individual cells trigger a chemical chain reaction which leads to widespread molecular breakdown is a reasonably well-understood process. But this latest study details how death spreads though an organism at the end of its life.

In worms, the topic of the study, death can be seen under the microscope as a wave of eerie blue florescence that travels through the gut of the worm.

"We've identified the chemical pathways of self-destruction that propagate cell death in worms, which we see as this glowing blue fluorescence traveling through the body," explained study leader David Gems of the Institute of Healthy Aging at University College London.

"It's like a blue Grim Reaper, tracking death as it spreads throughout the organism until all life is extinguished."

The blue florescence, Gems and his colleagues learned, is caused by a cell death pathway called necrosis, which, in turn, is dependent on calcium signaling. A molecule called anthranillic acid is the cause of the blue hue. The mechanisms involved in the worms' death is similar to other animals, including humans.

A fascinating discovery Gems and his colleagues made is that the death process can be stalled by interrupting the calcium signaling. While this cannot prevent death from natural cell deterioration caused by, for example, old age, death induced by other stresses can be delayed, the researchers found, by blocking the calcium signaling pathway.

"We found that when we blocked this pathway, we could delay death induced by a stress such as infection, but we couldn't slow death from old age," Gems said. "This suggests that ageing causes death by a number of processes acting in parallel."

Gems continued that "the findings cast doubt on the theory that aging is simply a consequence of an accumulation of molecular damage. We need to focus on the biological events that occur during aging and death to properly understand how we might be able to interrupt these processes."