Apoptosis - Placing death under control

Death of individual cells is part of the normal process of life, and how it is controlled has become a hot research area. That's plain from the identification by no less than four groups of a protein which, after stimulation of receptors of the tumour necrosis factor family, seems to have a key part in regulating the cells' killing mechanism. The groups give the protein different names, and moreover variously believe that it acts to inhibit the induction of cell death or to activate it.