On the disturbance of osmotic equilibrium as a possible physical cause triggering plasmalemma invagination or protrusion at the initial stage of phagocytosis

The chemical nature of phagocytosis is the subject of many hundreds of publ ications including a lot of yearly reviews. At the same time the morphologi cal picture of the initial stage of phagosome formation and complete intern alization of the phagosome is identical in all, biochemical different, case s. It consists of the local protrusion or invagination of the phagocyte pla smalemmas accompanied by pseudopodia generation. This makes desirable the c reation of the theory, able to explain the possible cause of such morpholog ical similarity of essentially different biochemical phenomena. A brief exp osition is presented here of the mathematical theory [20] whose aim is to p rove that the disturbance of the osmotic equilibrium in a system consisting of the phagocyte and the large solid particle immersed into the wash basin and adsorbed on the external boundary of the phagocyte plasmalemma may be considered the main cause of the aforementioned similarity This disturbance is the result of the heterogeneous reaction between the hydrolases of lyso somes and specific to them substrates. The material of this paper is presen ted in a descriptive terms, so that the mathematical analysis of the proble m solution, and the mathematically formalized formulations are replaced by an informal description. No proof of any assertion is presented. Such a manner of the material prese ntation is chosen in order to make the paper more lucid for biologists.