Biochemistry - The Chemical Reactions of Living Cells, Volume 1 - D. Metzler 1980

Site of Action
Eukaryotic cells
Lysosomes and microbodies

Lysosomes are single-membrane-bound vesicles containing a full Complement of Enzymes capable of breaking down virtually any cellular component. They appear to be derived from Golgi membranes. In Cells capable of engulfing food particles (such as amoebas), lysosomes provide the enzymes necessary for Digestion. They also degrade worn-out or redundant cellular components, including Cell/35.html">Mitochondria. Lysosomes are essential cellular Organelles [23, 24]; certain severe human diseases are caused specifically by the deficiency of specific lysosomal enzymes.

Microbodies are found in many types of cells [24, 25], sometimes accounting for up to one-third of the mitochondrial population in green leaves. Similar in size to mitochondria, microbodies are bounded by a single membrane and occasionally contain a crystalline-appearing «core». Their membrane is permeable to low-molecular-weight compounds (such as sucrose), which makes it possible to separate these organelles from mitochondria by sucrose gradient centrifugation, where microbodies have a density of approximately 1.25 g∙cm-3, whereas sucrose-impermeable mitochondria settle at 1.19.

Microbodies contain a high concentration of enzymes that catalyze the formation and decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Two Types of microbodies are known: Peroxisomes, present in Liver, Kidney, and green leaf cells, and glyoxysomes, found in germinating oilseeds. Glyoxysomes play a specialized role by catalyzing the reactions of The Glyoxylate cycle (Chap. 11, Sec. D.4).



Last update: 06/08/2026

Editorial and Educational Adaptation: This material has been compiled based on the primary/original source text. The project team performed an editorial review, corrected technical inaccuracies, structured sections, and adapted the content for an educational format.

What was processed:

  • elimination of formatting defects (OCR errors, structural breaks, corrupted characters);
  • editorial organization of content;
  • standardization of terminology in accordance with academic sources;
  • verification of factual statements against the original source text.

All mentions of the author, publication year, and origin of the primary text have been preserved in accordance with the source.