Morphological Analysis - Morphology Characteristics of Cytoxicity and Apoptosis (Jul/14/2010 )

I am trying to find characteristics of cells that are undergoing cytoxicity or apoptosis for purposes of writing a proposal.

I'm a bit lost as to what I would see under the microscope for cells undergoing 1) cytotoxicity, vs 2) apoptotic, in comparison with normal cells.

What does cytoplasmic vacuolization mean?

Anyone have a review/PDF of these types of analysis?



Thanks,

Cytotoxicity means that the drug affect the cells such that the cells are damaged, this usually (but not necessarily) results in cell death. Often, but not always cells die via apoptotic pathways which have some quite characteristic features such as membrane blebbing and nuclear condensation.

The following link has the general information http://www.sgul.ac.uk/depts/immunology/~dash/apoptosis/, and a link to a video of apoptosis.

Cells can also become senscent where the cells enlarge, flatten, often form multiple nuclei, and cytoplasmic vacuoles. Vacuoles are empty bubble-like holes in the cytoplasm.