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Just as people keep their houses clean and clutter under control, a crew of cells in the body is in charge of clearing the waste the body generates, including dying cells. The housekeeping cells remove unwanted material by a process called phagocytosis, which literally means eating cells. The housekeepers engulf and ingest the dying cells and break them down to effectively eliminate them. Phagocytosis is very important for the body s health, said Dr. Zheng Zhou, whose lab at Baylor College of Medicine has been studying phagocytosis for many years and provided key new insights into this essential process. When this cell-eat-cell process fails, the dying cells will lose their integrity, break down and release their content into the surrounding tissues. Dumping the cell content would cause direct tissue damage and trigger inflammatory and autoimmune responses. If the dying cells are infected by a virus, releasing the cellular content would spread the infection.