Importantly, however, during the past decade, evidence of PCD has been obtained in both the unicellular fungus, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae1 and some filamentous fungi9, organisms consisting of networks of tubular and multinuclear cells (hyphae), which might or might not be subdivided by cell septa. In these systems, PCD is involved in different biological processes, including interactions with other systems, development, and aging10. Some of these processes exhibit typical characteristics of apoptosis, which is one specific type of PCD: externalization of phosphatidylserine, release of cytochrome c, involvement of cysteine proteases, the presence of mitochondrial-signaling pathways via homologs of the human apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF)11. Apoptotic-like cell death was first described in Saccharomyces cerevisiae over 10 years ago, but yeast apoptosis remained controversial, mainly due to its questionable physiological relevance and a lack of molecular and genomic data12,13.