Life Cycle
When a monocyte enters damaged tissue through the endothelium of a blood vessel, a process known as the leukocyte extravasation, it undergoes a series of changes to become a macrophage. Monocytes are attracted to a damaged site by chemical substances through chemotaxis, triggered by a range of stimuli including damaged cells, pathogens and cytokines released by macrophages already at the site. At some sites such as the testis, macrophages have been shown to populate the organ through proliferation. Unlike short-lived neutrophils, macrophages survive longer in the body up to a maximum of several months.
Read more about this topic: Macrophage
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Romans, 6:23.
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)