Question: What mechanisms do our cells and body use to counteract bad bacteria that invade our body?

Hayley Clissold answered on 15 Jun 2015:

There are many different ways that our bodies can fight off invading bacteria. For me, the part of the cell that I look at is called the ‘lysosome’. This is a compartment within the cell that acts like a dustbin. It eats up and degrades anything that the cell takes up and either doesn’t want or needs in a broken-down form. It does this by providing an acidic environment that bacteria can’t survive in. There are lots of enzymes called ‘hydrolases’ inside lysosomes too and these effectively break down proteins and invading bacteria.

Unfortunately some bacteria are very sneaky and are actually able to avoid being destroyed in the lysosome…and that’s what my research is about!