Endocytosis

Topic Description

What happens if there is a greater mass of materials outside of the cell than the cell can obtain through simple diffusion? In other words, is there a way for cells to obtain large numbers of solutes, or even larger types of solutes with greater efficiency? This is when a special kind of bulk transport is utilized. It is called Endocytosis. Endocytosis will use membrane packaging to pull the materials into the cell. The cell can engulf the material by wrapping extensions of the cell membrane around it and drawing it into the cell as vacuole that will now be a part of the internal environment of the cell. Endocytosis is a general term for bulk transporting things into the cell. In fact, there are different types of endocytosis on the cell, such as Phagocytosis, receptor mediated endocytosis and Pinocytosis. Pinocytosis is just like phagocytosis; however, instead of a few larger solutes, there are simply mass amounts of solutes. These solutes are small enough to diffuse, but the cell wants to grab as many as it can so that the solutes don’t get lots when they diffuse in a direction away from the cell. So, in Pinocytosis, once the solutes are bulk transported into the cell, the solutes don’t need to be broken down with the help of a lysosome. So, Pincocytosis is used to bring it bulk amounts of smaller items, then those materials will pass through the membrane of the formed vacuole once inside the cell. Receptor mediated endocytosis is simply utilizing specialized protein receptors on the outside of the cell to hold on to the solutes that the cell wants, and then engulfing them in mass quantities through bulk transport. The incoming substances bind with receptors to even get inside of the cell. This a way for The cell to grab bulk amounts of very specific solutes.