Commentary: The cellular condensation of dying plant cells: Programmed retraction or necrotic collapse?

• Paper argues that apoptosis-like programmed cell death morphology is a programmed retraction.
• Retraction may be a fundamental part of the cell death cascade, rather than cellular collapse.
• Suggests the morphology may be a component of the death process rather than simply a reaction to stress.
• Essential to be able to distinguish between apoptosis-like programmed cell death and necrosis.

In this commentary we argue that the recent renaming of all types of plant programmed cell death (PCD) into two categories of vacuolar cell death and necrosis is premature and does not fully take into account different forms of cell death that may operate in plant cells. Specifically, we believe that the condensed protoplast morphology associated with many instances of PCD may come about due to an active cell death-associated cellular retraction rather than simple rupture of the plasma membrane. We argue that it is important to be able to distinguish between cells that have died having undergone this protoplast retraction and those which have died without protoplast retraction. In our opinion this differentiation is essential as the control of these two types of death may differ in several respects.