# Dead but not gone: the interplay between the programmed cell death process and surrounding bacteria

## TL;DR

This review explores how cell death interacts with bacteria, highlighting new insights into host-microbe communication and potential therapeutic applications.

## Contribution

The paper introduces recent findings on how bacteria respond to and influence host cell death processes.

## Key findings

- Bacteria can modulate host cell death pathways, affecting tissue repair and immune responses.
- Host cell death can influence the composition and behavior of the microbiota.
- Understanding this interplay may lead to new treatments for diseases like inflammatory bowel disease and cancer.

## Abstract

Cell death is an integral part of homeostasis, removing damaged and infected cells and replenishing healthy cells. It is a process well understood from a host perspective, with clearly delineated pathways and an expansive literature as to how it interacts with other immune and tissue mechanisms. However, the interaction between cell death and the microbial community is less well explored. There is an understanding of how bacterial pathogens are able to induce death and can have a detrimental impact on tissue resolution and repair but little on how bacteria respond to homeostatic cell death or death caused by non-bacterial stimuli. This review will cover recent advances in the understanding of host-microbe communication during cell death and will discuss how bacteria modulate/are modulated by cell death-related phenomena. The interplay between the microbiota and the fundamental processes involved in host cell death presents an exciting opportunity to discover how modulation of host mechanisms can beneficially modulate the microbiota, and therefore concurrently offer potential routes to control a number of conditions that have been linked to aberrant microbiota composition, including inflammatory bowel disease and cancer.