- published: 28 Apr 2016
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In biology, autolysis, more commonly known as self-digestion, refers to the destruction of a cell through the action of its own enzymes. It may also refer to the digestion of an enzyme by another molecule of the same enzyme. The term derives from the Greek words αυτό ("self") and λύσις ("splitting").
Autolytic cell destruction is uncommon in living adult organisms and usually occurs in injured cells or dying tissue. Autolysis is initiated by the cells' lysosomes releasing digestive enzymes into the cytoplasm. These enzymes are however released due to the cessation of active processes in the cell, not as an active process. In other words, though autolysis resembles the active process of digestion of nutrients by live cells, the dead cells are not actively digesting themselves as is often claimed and as the synonym self-digestion of autolysis seems to imply. Autolysis of individual cell organelles can be lessened if the organelle is stored in ice-cold isotonic buffer after cell fractionation.
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:
Subdisciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.
The term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, "life" and the suffix -λογία, -logia, "study of." It appears in German (as biologie) as early as 1791, and may be a back-formation from the older word amphibiology (meaning the study of amphibians) by deletion of the initial amphi-.