Measurement of Apoptosis in Cell Culture

Apoptosis is a genetically regulated process by which cells can be eliminated in vivo in response to a wide range of physiological and toxicological signals. Cells in vitro may be induced to die by apoptosis, e.g., by depletion of nutrients or survival factors from the culture media. Described here are several biochemical and cytometric techniques of varying complexity that have been developed to detect cellular and subcellular changes occurring during apoptosis. For all procedures, cells can be obtained from either monolayer or suspension culture.