Phagocytosis has been at the forefront of cell biology for more than a century. Initially, phagocytosis, which comes from Greek words meaning devouring cells, was discovered in the late 19th century by Ilya Metchnikoff, who was awarded, together with Paul Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1908 in recognition of their work on immunity. At that time Metchnikoff had already identified a function for phagocytes not only in host defense but also as scavengers of degenerating host cells during metamorphosis of tadpoles, thus providing one of the first descriptions of apoptotic...