page_title: Phagocyte
section_title: Methods of killing
hierarchical_section_title: Phagocyte / Methods of killing
caption_attribution_description: English: Simplified illustration of the stages of phagocytosis
context_page_description: Phagocytes are cells that protect the body by ingesting 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", from the Greek kutos, "hollow vessel". They are essential for fighting infections and for subsequent immunity. Phagocytes are important throughout the animal kingdom and are highly developed within vertebrates. One litre of human blood contains about six billion phagocytes. They were discovered in 1882 by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov while he was studying starfish larvae. Mechnikov was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery. Phagocytes occur in many species; some amoebae behave like macrophage phagocytes, which suggests that phagocytes appeared early in the evolution of life.
  Phagocytes of humans and other animals are called "professional" or "non-professional" depending on how effective they are at phagocytosis. The professional phagocytes include many types of white blood cells.
context_section_description: The killing of microbes is a critical function of phagocytes that is performed either within the phagocyte (intracellular killing) or outside of the phagocyte (extracellular killing).
caption: Simplified diagram of the phagocytosis and destruction of a bacterial cell
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