Dying to live. Cell death as a regulatory process

Abstract

Usually, the organization of living systems is explained by appealing to an intrinsic purpose that is based on the biological survival. However, paradigmatically, it is inevitable to observe that the final destiny of all living organisms is death. In this work, we defend that, from an organizational approach, there is a form of death—Regulatory Cell Death—that, far from being a mere "absence of life", is a process of biological regulation and a feature of self-maintenance in multicellular organisms.