Type of insult (drugs, oxidants, intoxicants and other factors) and duration of exposure have been studies well to analyze the initiation of various death pathways (apoptosis, necrosis, necroptosis, autophagy etc). It remains unclear whether a master switch exist within a cell or level and duration of insult decide the initiation of death pathways in mammalian cells.
One possible 'master switch' could be caspase activity. For example when cells are treated with a cell death inducer like TNF-a they would normally undergo apoptosis. But if the cells are treated with a pan-caspase inhibitor, the cells will switch to a caspase-independent form of cell death, namely the MLKL-dependent, inflammatory necroptosis.
It is possible that caspase activity could also determine the type of cell death which will occur in response to other insults.
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