Necrotaxis

By the word necrotaxis is understood a collection of phenomena provoked by sudden cell death, or more exactly by the agony of a cell killed by the experimenter (Bessis, 1963). Recent work has followed three approaches: the role of the cytoplasm, and of anucleated fragments; the role of calcium; and the study of the direction or orientation of movement, by biophysical methods. Numerous questions remain unanswered: the presence or absence of relationship with immune phenomena and the comparison of necrotaxis and apoptosis.