Degranulation
Degranulation is a term describing how granules within cells fuse with the cell membrane. During degranulation pre-stored molecules and proteins in these granules are released into the extracellular environment,as can be seen by our basophil here. The released substances are aimed at hitting survival and propagation of invading pathogens in a variety of different ways, but some are also aimed to attract and activate other immune cells to boost the attack against the invader. Whereas granulocytes like neutrophils, eosinophils, mast cells and basophils spread their granule contents widely, cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells (NK cells) focus their killing by tightly binding to infected host cells and only releasing their granule content into the close space between cells. Take a look at this video and see if you can identify which proteins released by the cytotoxic T cell help kill the infected cell.