Intracellular_digestion
Every organism requires energy to be active.[1] However, to obtain energy from its outside environment, cells must not only retrieve molecules from their surroundings but also break them down.[1] This process is known as intracellular digestion.[1] In its broadest sense, intracellular digestion is the breakdown of substances within the cytoplasm of a cell. In detail, a phagocyte's duty is obtaining food particles and digesting it in a vacuole.[2] For example, following phagocytosis, the ingested particle (or phagosome) fuses with a lysosome containing hydrolytic enzymes to form a phagolysosome; the pathogens or food particles within the phagosome are then digested by the lysosome's enzymes.
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Intracellular digestion can also refer to the process in which animals that lack a digestive tract bring food items into the cell for the purposes of digestion for nutritional needs. This kind of intracellular digestion occurs in many unicellular protozoans, in Pycnogonida, in some molluscs, Cnidaria and Porifera. There is another type of digestion, called extracellular digestion. In amphioxus, digestion is both extracellular and intracellular.