Marcus G. Hodges Saint Augustine's College Dr. Theodore Bremner Department of Biology, Howard University Apoptosis, a physiological process, involves sequential intracellular mechanisms, which cause cells to undergo cell suicide.
Effector caspases cause apoptosis by performing a number of proteolytic cleavages in the cell.
Jurkat T lymphocytes are leukemic derivatives of normal T lymphocytes and are resistant to apoptosis. However, AICD has a period of proliferation followed by cell death while cycloheximide immediately kills cells upon treatment. Therefore, a determination of whether the activation of Jurkat T lymphocytes would modulate cycloheximide-induced apoptosis was desired. In addition, cell counts and viability tests were performed in approximately 24 hr intervals. The data generated from this investigation suggests that activation of Jurkat T lymphocytes does not modulate cycloheximide-induced apoptosis.