Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Phagocytosis (from Ancient Greek φαγεῖν (phagein) 'to eat' and κύτος (kytos) 'cell') is the process by which a cell uses its plasma membrane to engulf a large particle (≥ 0.5 μm), giving rise to an internal compartment called the phagosome. It is one type of endocytosis. A cell that performs phagocytosis is called a phagocyte.
Unbound phagocyte surface receptors do not trigger phagocytosis. 2. Binding of receptors causes them to cluster. 3. Phagocytosis is triggered and the particle is taken up by the phagocyte. Phagocytosis is the process of taking in particles such as bacteria, invasive fungi, parasites, dead host cells, and cellular and foreign debris by a cell. [22]
Phagocytosis of an otherwise-viable cell may occur because the cell is recognised as stressed, activated, senescent, damaged, pathogenic or non-self, or is misrecognised. Cells are phagocytosed as a result of: i) expressing eat-me signals on their surface, ii) losing don’t-eat-me signals, and/or iii) binding of opsonins. It is clear that ...
Macrophages can be protective in different ways: they can remove dead tumor cells (in a process called phagocytosis) following treatments that kill these cells; they can serve as drug depots for some anticancer drugs; [106] they can also be activated by some therapies to promote antitumor immunity. [107]
Opsonins are extracellular proteins that, when bound to substances or cells, induce phagocytes to phagocytose the substances or cells with the opsonins bound. [1] Thus, opsonins act as tags to label things in the body that should be phagocytosed (i.e. eaten) by phagocytes (cells that specialise in phagocytosis, i.e. cellular eating). [1]
The cells are primarily monocytes and macrophages, and they accumulate in lymph nodes and the spleen. The Kupffer cells of the liver and tissue histiocytes are also part of the MPS. The mononuclear phagocyte system and the monocyte macrophage system refer to two different entities, often mistakenly understood as one.
The other cells involved in the innate response include innate lymphoid cells, mast cells, eosinophils, basophils, and natural killer cells. [ 28 ] Phagocytosis is an important feature of cellular innate immunity performed by cells called phagocytes that engulf pathogens or particles.
The first demonstration of phagocytosis as a property of leukocytes, the immune cells, was from the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel. [14] [15] In 1846, English physician Thomas Wharton Jones had discovered that a group of leucocytes, which he called "granule-cell" (later renamed and identified as eosinophil [16]), could change shape, the phenomenon later called amoeboid movement.