Definition
noun
A process of ingesting relatively large particles of food that carries out via intracellular digestion.
Supplement
Phagotrophy is essentially the engulfment of large food particulate inside cells through a method of phagotrophic nutrition, thus includes digestion inside the cells like for example the amoebas which have pseudopodia that gush around food particle until it is absorbed inside the body.
Phagotrophic organisms has a quite different method in feeding compare to osmotrophic organisms where it able to uptake large particles through internal digestion which contains inorganic materials and light energy for growth and survival.
Phagocytosis revealed by Metchnikoff Elie in 1882 that entails the precise kind of endocytosis involving vesicular internalization of large materials such as bacteria which differ from internalization of various liquids that involved the acquirement of nutrients from cells and immune system. It is also the mechanism used to eradicate pathogens and cell rubbish.
The astonishing examples of these mechanisms showed in Chlorella vulgaris, normal unicellular eukaryote that undergo thousands of generations. When these organisms are inoculated to the predator Ochromonas vallescia, flagellated protists shows immunity and become dominant that forms globose cluster of cells even in the presence of phagotrophs, thereby reveals virtually immune to predation by the flagellate.
Compare:
• pinocytosis
See also:
• endocytosis
Related term:
• phagocytosis (verb)
• phagotrophic ( adjective)
Dictionary > Phagotrophy
