Food vacuole

This article is about the Plasmodium intracellular organelle. For other organelles known as "food vacuole", see Vacuole.

The food vacuole, or digestive vacuole, is an organelle found in parasites that cause malaria. During the stage of the parasites' lifecycle where it resides within a human (or other mammalian) red blood cell, it is the site of haemoglobin digestion and the formation of the large haemozoin crystals that can be seen under a light microscope.[1]

References

  1. ↑ Banerjee, R.; Liu, J.; Beatty, W.; Pelosof, L.; Klemba, M.; Goldberg, D. E. (2002). "Four plasmepsins are active in the Plasmodium falciparum food vacuole, including a protease with an active-site histidine". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (2): 990–995. doi:10.1073/pnas.022630099. PMC 117418. PMID 11782538.
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