Question

You’re a technician in lab that has run the following experiment: You’ve injected cytochrome c into the cytosol of wild-type cells and into the cytosol of cells that are deficient in Bax and Bak. Which of the cells would you expect to undergo apoptosis? Both? Neither? One or the other? If one or the other, which one? In any case, explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Injecting cytochrome c into the cytosol of wild-type cells would result in apoptosis, while cells deficient in Bax and Bak would not undergo apoptosis.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this experiment, injecting cytochrome c into the cytosol of wild-type cells and cytosol of cells deficient in Bax and Bak would result in apoptosis in the wild-type cells only. The reason for this is because the Bcl2 proteins Bak and Bax, which are essential for the release of cytochrome c into the cytoplasm and triggering apoptosis, are deficient in the cells lacking Bax and Bak. Apoptosis is a programmed cell death process that is initiated when cells are no longer required or become damaged. In this experiment, the release of cytochrome c into the cytoplasm sets off molecular events leading to apoptosis. Therefore, the wild-type cells injected with cytochrome c would undergo apoptosis, while the cells deficient in Bax and Bak would not.