✦ LIBER ✦
Preliminary investigations on the possible antimicrobial properties of tunicate blood cell vanadium
✍ Scribed by Rowley, Andrew F.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1983
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 400 KB
- Volume
- 227
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-104X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Tunicates have the unique ability to accumulate and store metals such as vanadium. In the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, this element is stored in phagocytic blood cells termed granular amoebocytes and vacuolar hyaline amoebocytes. Incubation of bacteria and amoebocytes together results in the phagocytosis of these particles with subsequent fusion of the vanadiumcontaining vacuoles with the bacteria-laden phagosomes. This process may be important in the intracellular digestion of such microorganisms.