Just watch the macrophage as it battles bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. Please read the description below! FIXED MACROPHAGE SIMULATOR A macrophage is a white blood cell, or leukocyte. It comes from the monocyte, which is a white blood cell that cleans up debris. When it leaves the bloodstream to attack and fight, it is called a macrophage. Its job changes - even though it still cleans up debris by eating it up, it also eats up pathogens. For this reason it is called a phagocyte. The name macrophage means big eater in Greek. There are two types of macrophages: fixed and free-floating. The free floating ones move around the bloodstream and lymphatic system and leave to go to the site of infection to eat up pathogens. The fixed ones sit around on organs to protect them. This simulator is of a fixed macrophage. It sits around and extends appendages to gobble up pathogens. It is amoeba-like, so it extends itself and pulls pathogens towards it. Then it wraps itself around it and destroys the pathogen with its lysosomes, which break it down. Macrophages can normally do this about 100 times before their organelles cannot repair their used up lysosomes anymore.
Can we reach 1000 loves? :) FEATURED! (15 May 2018) Thank you to Lego_357 for suggesting it. Thank you for 600+ favs and 900+ loves! 26k views, yay! :) Thank you so much Scratch Team for featuring this. All art by @CodeBit. All code by @CodeBit. Idea & Inspiration: I wanted to make an animation of a white blood cell but decided to make a simulator instead. Not inspired by anything on Scratch. And thank you so much to Crash Course and Kurzgesagt (YouTube channels) for showing me ways of drawing leukocytes! Liked this? Check out another Immune System Project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/219549911/ Feel free to remix and add stuff!
