Intracellular digestion

In its broadest sense, intracellular digestion is the breakdown of substances within the cytoplasm of a cell. For example, following phagocytosis, the ingested particle (or phagosome) fuses with a lysosome containing hydrolytic enzymes to form a phagolysosome; the pathogens or food particles within the phagosome are then digested by the lysosome's enzymes.