Emergence of large-scale cell death through ferroptotic trigger waves

Abstract Large-scale cell death is commonly observed during organismal development and in human pathologies 1–5 . These cell death events extend over great distances to eliminate large populations of cells, raising the question of how cell death can be coordinated in space and time. One mechanism that enables long-range signal transmission is trigger waves 6 , but how this mechanism might be used for death events in cell populations remains unclear. Here we demonstrate that ferroptosis, an iron- and lipid-peroxidation-dependent form of cell death, can propagate across human cells over long distances (≥5 mm) at constant speeds (around 5.5 μm min −1 ) through trigger waves of reactive oxygen species (ROS).…