Blood questions

In 1937 Bernard Fantus, director of therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, established the one of the first hospital blood bank in the United States. In creating a hospital laboratory that preserved, refrigerated and stored donor blood, Fantus originated the term "blood bank".

Erythropoietin is secreted by the kidney in response to cellular hypoxia, and stimulates red blood cell production in the bone marrow. The other three are secreted by the adrenal gland.

Ichor was the ethereal fluid that flowed in the veins of gods and immortals. It also ran through the single vein of Talos, a giant bronze man with wings, responsible for guarding Europa in Ancient Crete.

Hemoglobin is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells (erythrocytes). It carries oxygen from the respiratory organs (lungs or gills) to the rest of the body.

Thrombocytes are a component of blood whose function is to stop bleeding by clumping and clotting blood vessel injuries. Mammalian thrombocytes have no cell nucleus: they are fragments of cytoplasm that are derived from the megakaryocytes of the bone marrow, and then enter the circulation.

Lobsters,octopus, snails, spiders and other creepy-crawlies have blood that uses copper for oxygen transport. This is called Hemocyanin. Oxygenation causes a color change between the colorless Cu deoxygenated form and the blue Cu oxygenated form. Vertebrates like humans , have iron based blood.

In humans, mature red blood cells are flexible and oval biconcave discs. They lack a cell nucleus and most organelles, in order to accommodate maximum space for hemoglobin; they can be viewed as sacks of hemoglobin, with a plasma membrane as the sack. Approximately 2.4 million new erythrocytes are produced per second in human adults.

Plasma, a component of blood, is an aqueous solution.

In order to reduce the loss of blood and facilitate the recovery of the blood vessel at the site of the injury, a blood clot is formed. It is made up of platelets and dissolved plasma protein-fibrogen. By the substance released by the blood-thrombin plate, fibrogen changes into fibrin, which creates a dense network at the site of injury.

AB is the rarest of all AB0 types, and Rh- is always less common than Rh+. In Western Europe, only 1% of the population has AB-. In the Eastern Asia Rh- is very rare: in Japan, only 0,05% of the population has AB-.