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Thursday, 3 July 2014

Phagocytes have voracious Appetites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocyte

Once inside this phagocyte, the bacterium is trapped in a compartment called a phagosome. Within one minute the phagosome merges with either a lysosome or a granule to form a phagolysosome. The bacterium is then subjected to an overwhelming array of killing mechanisms and is dead a few minutes later. Dendritic cells and macrophages are not so fast, and phagocytosis can take many hours in these cells. Macrophages are slow and untidy eaters; they engulf huge quantities of material and frequently release some undigested back into the tissues. This debris serves as a signal to recruit more phagocytes from the blood.Phagocytes have voracious appetites; scientists have even fed macrophages with iron filings and then used a small magnet to separate them from other cells.

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