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A cell that engulfs and digests debris and invading microorganisms
Answer for the clue "A cell that engulfs and digests debris and invading microorganisms ", 9 letters:
phagocyte
Word definitions for phagocyte in dictionaries
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Phagocyte \Phag"o*cyte\, n. [Gr. ? to eat + ? a hollow vessel.] (Physiol.) A leucocyte which plays a part in retrogressive processes by taking up (eating), in the form of fine granules, the parts to be removed.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1884, from German phagocyten (plural), coined in German in 1884 by Dr. Elias Metchnikoff (1845-1916) from Greek phago- "eating, devouring" (see -phagous ) + -cyte (see cyto- ). Related: Phagocytosis .
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. a cell that engulfs and digests debris and invading microorganisms [syn: scavenger cell ]
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Phagocytes are cells that protect the body by ingesting ( phagocytosing ) harmful foreign particles, bacteria , and dead or dying cells. Their name comes from the Greek phagein , "to eat" or "devour", and "-cyte", the suffix in biology denoting "cell", ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
Etymology 1 n. (context cytology English) A cell of the immune system, such as a neutrophil, macrophage or dendritic cell, that engulfs and destroys viruses, bacteria and waste materials, or in the case of mature dendritic cells; displays antigens from ...
Usage examples of phagocyte.
But a moment later he was an integral part of the crowd, indistinguishable from any of the healthy cells in the organism, attracting no interest from the phagocyte militiamen or the other cells beside him.
The wild, half-charlatan Metchnikoff had come out of Odessa in Russia to belch quaint theories about how phagocytes gobble up malignant germs.
From then on he preached phagocytes, he defended their reputations, he did some real research on them, he made enemies about them, he doubtless helped to start the war of 1914 with them, by the bad feeling they caused between France and Germany.
Metchnikoff saw the wandering cells of the water flea, the phagocytes of this creature, flow towards those perilous needles, surround them, eat them, melt them up, digest them.
Universities of Europe, and had he not lectured learnedly to the doctors of Odessa, telling about the phagocytes of the blood, which gobble microbes?
Institute, Professor Metchnikoff can train these little phagocytes to gobble up all microbes?
Metchnikoff came out of the fog of his theory of phagocytes for a moment, and tried to satisfy them by sowing chicken cholera bacilli among the meadow mice which were eating up the crops.
So he asked for a vacation, got it, packed his bag, and went to the Congress of Vienna to tell everybody about phagocytes, and to look for a quiet place in which to work.
Paris his theory of phagocytes would have the prestige of a great Institute back of it.
One old German, Baumgarten, wrote a general denunciation of phagocytes, on principle, once a year, in an important scientific journal.
For twenty years both sides were so enraged they could not stop to think that perhaps both our blood and our phagocytes might work together to guard us from germs.
Metchnikoff and his opponents to the idea that it might be neither the blood nor the phagocytes which are at the bottom of our resistance to some diseases.
Mozart or whistle the symphonies of Beethoven, and sometimes he seemed to be more learned about the dramas and the loves of Goethe than about those phagocytes upon which his whole fame rested.
I shall prove that these microbes inside the phagocytes are still alive!
Metchnikoff forced his opponents to admit that phagocytes, sometimes, can eat vicious microbes.