Let us first take a look at the enemy eaters- the phagocytic cells or the macrophages. The cells, which eat invading microbes and our own moribund, dead or 'doomed to die' (apoptotic) cells.
The well established (you may call them professional) macrophages are the - neutrophils, monocytes, and the Kupffer cells.
Neutrophils (a kind of WBCs) are the most numerous of the phagocytes. An intruding organism is most likely to come across a neutrophil out of all the phagocytic cells in our body. They take in the bacteria and cell debris into their bodies i.e.ingest them and digest them. They reduce the bacterial or fungal cells and other ingested matter to their constituent building blocks like amino acids.
Monocytes (another kind of WBCs) are the killing machines of the body. The Monocytes circulate in blood and then emigrate into the tissues. In some organs they are recognized by special names, e.g. Kupffer cells in liver, and microglia in brain, in kidney as mesangial cells (also known as Polkissen or lacis cells), and in bone as osteoclasts (the bone breakers). Elsewhere they are referred to as tissue macrophages. Kupffer cells or the stellate cells of Von Kupffer are found in the liver lining the blood filled cavities. They eat any microbes reaching liver through the hepatic portal vein coming from the gut.
Langerhans cells, Natural Killer cells, Clara cells, Granstein cells, Helper T cells, CD4 cells, cytotoxic T cells, B cells, CD8 cells, killer T cells, mast cells, dendritic cells all are helpful in killing and removal of invaders of our bodies.
I strongly urge you to spare a few minutes and read an interesting account of Dr. I. I. Mechnikov, a microbiologist and Nobel laureate of 1908 - in medicne & physiology for his work on phagocytosis, one of the greatest scientists in the world, who spurred by personal tragedies in life, went ahead waging war against the germs and for the mankind discovered the phenomenon of phagocytosis.
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