parthanatos

English

Etymology

Blend of PAR +‎ Thanatos (“Greek personification of death”)

Noun

parthanatos (uncountable)

1. (physiology) A form of apoptosis associated with PARP.
   • 2006, Seong-Woon Yu, “Apoptosis-inducing factor mediates poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) polymer-induced cell death”, in PNAS, volume 103, number 48:

     Our results suggest that excessive activation of PARP-1 leads to an intrinsic cell death program, which we designate as parthanatos to distinguish from necrosis and apoptosis.

   • 2008, Gary E. Gibson, Mitochondria and Oxidative Stress in Neurodegenerative Disorders:

     Also, the lack of knowledge of mechanisms of calpain activation in parthanatos makes it difficult to identify calpain as PAR-dependent mediators of AIF release.

   • 2010, Denson G. Fujikawa, Acute Neuronal Injury: The Role of Excitotoxic Programmed Cell Death Mechanisms‎^[1]:

     The biochemical features of parthanatos are distinct from classically defined pathways of cell death, and include rapid PARP-1 activation, early PAR accumulation, mitochondrial depolarization, early nuclear AIF translocation, loss of cellular NAD and ATP, and late caspase activation.