Deadly sea snail toxin could be key to making better medicines
Scientists are finding clues on how to treat diabetes and hormone disorders in an unexpected place: a toxin from one of the most venomous animals on the planet.
Aug 20, 2024
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Scientists are finding clues on how to treat diabetes and hormone disorders in an unexpected place: a toxin from one of the most venomous animals on the planet.
Aug 20, 2024
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44
Vaccines work by equipping our immune systems to fight an invading virus. When we get vaccinated against COVID-19, specialized immune cells known as B cells learn to recognize the virus. If we subsequently get infected with ...
Sep 4, 2024
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In the late 1980s, Linda Rose Frank began working with HIV-positive individuals at the University of Pittsburgh. At the time, those affected were mainly young men with a terrifying prognosis.
Sep 2, 2024
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As syphilis cases surge throughout the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first diagnostic at-home test to spot the bacterial disease.
Aug 16, 2024
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As detailed in the opening of this editorial, DNA methylation-based epigenetic clocks are used as biomarkers of biological age in human health. Multiple epigenetic clocks have rapidly emerged in the past decade by modeling ...
Aug 14, 2024
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Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's cells — such as nutrients and oxygen — and transports waste products away from those same cells.
In vertebrates, it is composed of blood cells suspended in a liquid called blood plasma. Plasma, which comprises 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (90% by volume), and contains dissolved proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), platelets and blood cells themselves. The blood cells present in blood are mainly red blood cells (also called RBCs or erythrocytes) and white blood cells, including leukocytes and platelets. The most abundant cells in vertebrate blood are red blood cells. These contain hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein, which facilitates transportation of oxygen by reversibly binding to this respiratory gas and greatly increasing its solubility in blood. In contrast, carbon dioxide is almost entirely transported extracellularly dissolved in plasma as bicarbonate ion.
Vertebrate blood is bright-red when its hemoglobin is oxygenated. Some animals, such as crustaceans and mollusks, use hemocyanin to carry oxygen, instead of hemoglobin. Insects and some molluscs use a fluid called hemolymph instead of blood, the difference being that hemolymph is not contained in a closed circulatory system. In most insects, this "blood" does not contain oxygen-carrying molecules such as hemoglobin because their bodies are small enough for their tracheal system to suffice for supplying oxygen.
Jawed vertebrates have an adaptive immune system, based largely on white blood cells. White blood cells help to resist infections and parasites. Platelets are important in the clotting of blood. Arthropods, using hemolymph, have hemocytes as part of their immune system.
Blood is circulated around the body through blood vessels by the pumping action of the heart. In animals having lungs, arterial blood carries oxygen from inhaled air to the tissues of the body, and venous blood carries carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism produced by cells, from the tissues to the lungs to be exhaled.
Medical terms related to blood often begin with hemo- or hemato- (also spelled haemo- and haemato-) from the Ancient Greek word αἶμα (haima) for "blood". In terms of anatomy and histology, blood is considered a specialized form of connective tissue, given its origin in the bones and the presence of potential molecular fibers in the form of fibrinogen.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA