Skip to main content

Vacuoles

Reserve Granules, Food Vacuole (Pellicle), Parasitophorus Vacuole.

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Parasitology
  • 25 Accesses

Vacuoles are storage or transportation systems inside living cells. In addition some parasites induce the formation of so-called parasitophorous vacuoles, which enclose parasitic stages and thus protect them from the defense system of the host cells. Specialized defense cells (e.g., macrophages), however, internalize willingly parasites in order to digest them (Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Diagrammatic representation of a generalized cell forming different types of vacuoles (e.g., NV food vacuoles, LY lysosomes, MU, PP storage vacuoles, EX excretion vacuoles)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heinz Mehlhorn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this entry

Cite this entry

Mehlhorn, H. (2015). Vacuoles. In: Mehlhorn, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parasitology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27769-6_3359-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27769-6_3359-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27769-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics