I need a picture of a white blood cell engulphing an amoeba.

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Request for Question Clarification by willie-ga on 10 May 2004 03:49 PDT

Hi

The technical term is "Phagocytosis", and I found a picture of a white
blood cell in action here in the "Biology for Engineers" lecture
series at ( http://www.agen.ufl.edu/~chyn/age2062/lect/lect.htm )
The picture is here:
http://www.agen.ufl.edu/~chyn/age2062/lect/lect_06/4_25A.GIF

Human neutrophils are white blood cells that serve as professional
phagocytes: their primary function is to eat and kill bacteria and
they arrive quickly at the site of a bacterial infection. This
neutrophil, ingesting Streptococcus pyogenes, was imaged in gray scale
with phase contrast optics and colorized
http://www.cellsalive.com/cover2.htm


Let me know if this is sufficient.

willie-ga

While doing research I found some interesting stuff, but I was
ultimately unsuccessful in finding your picture.  One of the main
problems was the fact white blood cells work as little amoebas in our
body to engulf foreign bodies.  Therefore, almost any article with the
words "white blood cell" also inherently contain the word ameoba.

Still I thought I would share with you what I found:

Ironically, an amoeba engulfing a white blood cell
http://www.magma.ca/~amoeba/Amoeba%20Eats.htm

Ameobas acting as white blood cells
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010529070951.htm

White blood cells acting in ameoba-like fashion
http://health.howstuffworks.com/immune-system10.htm

Hope this helps --Rcubed

I found this one.
An electron micrograph, in which a human white blood cell is trapping
bacterial cells
http://library.thinkquest.org/3564/cell751.gif



willie-ga

I should point out that everyone who has commented thus far has
essentially no knowledge of the subject.  There is no specific cell
called a "white blood cell" - this term is used to refer to any cell
in the circulation other than the red cells.

As far as cells that phagocytose foreign cells, you're probably going
to be looking for a picture of a macrophage.  As the name suggests,
these cells are primarily responsible for engulfing foreign invaders
and processing their components to activate the rest of the immune
system against them.

I couldn't easily find a picture of a macrophage engulfing an amoeba. 
A GIS for 'macrophage amoeba' shows a micrograph of a macrophage that
likely has just phagocytosed an amoeba.  Perhaps that helps.