BIOA02H3 Lecture : BIOA02 Module 2 (Lectures 5 and beyond)
26 Dec 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
43
BIOA02H3 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
43 documents
Document Summary
Lecture 5: hearts and circulatory systems: the composition of blood. Blood consists of a fluid component called plasma and a cellular component consisting of red blood cells (erythrocytes) and white blood cells (cells involved in the immune system; the buffy coat ). In a human, approximately 55% of the blood volume is plasma. See pages 897 to 899 in the textbook. Blood cells originate from a blood stem cell. These stem cells can form myeloid stem cells which in turn differentiate into red blood cells (which contain haemoglobin and carry oxygen; see lecture 7), platelets (involved in clotting) and granulocytes (details in lecture 12). The stem cells can also form lymphoid stem cells which ultimately differentiate into b-lymphocytes, t-lymphocytes and killer t- Red blood cells contain the respiratory molecule, haemoglobin. Haemoglobin consists of 4 peptide subunits- 2 alpha and 2 beta. Each of these subunits contains a heme group.
