In this video, we're going to introduce some digestive organelles that are part of the endomembrane system. Recall in our previous lesson videos, we mentioned that some of the organelles of the endomembrane system are more specialized for cellular digestion or essentially breaking things down inside the cell. There are 2 specific organelles that we're going to focus on here in this video, and those are the lysosomes and the peroxisomes. Lysosomes are vesicles, acidic vesicles that carry digestive enzymes, and these digestive enzymes are responsible for breaking down and recycling food, cellular debris, bacteria, and damaged organelles, and all kinds of different things that are inside of the cell. So lysosomes are important for breaking down and recycling things. Lysosomes are primarily only found in animal cells, so they're not really found in plant cells. Lysosomes originate at the Golgi apparatus.
On the other hand, peroxisomes are also vesicles, just like lysosomes. Peroxisomes contain enzymes as well, and lysosomes and peroxisomes have some similarities, but they are also different from each other because peroxisomes are mainly used for breaking down toxic compounds, such as hydrogen peroxide or H2O2 which is a toxic compound inside of the cell, and peroxisomes are really important for helping to break down hydrogen peroxide because it can be toxic. Peroxisomes are also really important for breaking down fatty acids. Unlike lysosomes, which are only found in animal cells, peroxisomes are found in all eukaryotic cells, which includes both animal cells and plant cells. Unlike lysosomes, which originate at the Golgi apparatus, peroxisomes originate at the rough endoplasmic reticulum or the rough ER.
Let's take a look at our image down below to better distinguish between these lysosomes and peroxisomes. The top image here is specifically focusing on lysosomes. Notice that the lysosome is a vesicle, a very acidic vesicle or very acidic membrane bubble, tiny little membrane bubble. The lysosome is capable of fusing with other vesicles or other membrane structures. Here we're showing you a vesicle that's carrying cellular debris, and the cellular debris is the contents that you see on the inside of this vesicle. The lysosome is going to be capable of fusing and merging with other vesicles. Here you can see the fusion, so that the internal compartments are combined. This means that the digestive enzymes are going to be exposed to the cellular debris, and that means that the digestive enzymes can break down the cellular debris into its tiny little components, helping to break down and recycle the components within the cell.
Peroxisomes, on the other hand, notice that they are also vesicles, and they also contain enzymes, represented by these little green structures that you see. However, the enzymes in peroxisomes are specific for breaking down toxic compounds, like this representation right here is supposed to be a toxic compound. Peroxisomes can fuse with the toxic compound and then break the toxic compound into a component that is no longer toxic. Peroxisomes are also important for breaking down fatty acids as well as toxic compounds. This concludes our introduction to lysosomes and peroxisomes, and we will get some practice applying these concepts as we move forward in our course. I'll see you all in our next video.