Page 121 - The Miracle in the Cell Membrane

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)

employed. The prin ci pal forms of this meth od are pha go -
cy to sis and pin o cy to sis.
- Pha go cy to sis: In this way, bac te ria, virus es and par -
ti cles that will result in dam age to the cell or tis sue are
taken into the cell. The sub stan ces taken in are ones that
can do harm to the cell or tis sues are taken inside the cell,
where they are dis man tled by sub stan ces known as lysos -
o mes. After use ful com po nents have been absorbed into
the cell, the remain ing sub stan ces are expelled from the
cell and read ied for dis pos al by the excre to ry sys tem. For
exam ple, if you strike a part of your arm against some -
thing hard, the bruise will turn pur ple, and dead cells in
that region are taken up and dis posed of by this meth od.
Or when you catch an infec tion, cells absorb the microbes
and destroy them. For that rea son, pha go cy to sis is one of
the major tech niques employed by the immune sys tem,
pro vid ing swift and gen er al ly cer tain defense against
infec tions.
Only spe cif ic cells can per form pha go cy to sis, the
most impor tant of them being tis sue macro pha ges and
some leu co cytes. Macrophages, known as the defense
sys tem's clean-up cells, lit er al ly destroy ene mies by swal -
low ing them. Despite their small size (10 to 15 microm e -
ters), macro pha ges also pos sess the abil i ty to ingest and
digest large mol e cu les.
Macrophages can aim at a num ber of tar gets at once,
like a machin e gun spray ing bul lets, and can destroy a
num ber of ene mies at the same time. Antibodies, on the
other hand, are weap ons that aim at a sin gle tar get, with

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