![]() ![]() During the first day or two that it is in the circulation, an immature erythrocyte, known as a reticulocyte, will still typically contain remnants of organelles. Although leukocytes typically leave the blood vessels to perform their defensive functions, movement of erythrocytes from the blood vessels is abnormal.Īs an erythrocyte matures in the red bone marrow, it extrudes its nucleus and most of its other organelles. Erythrocytes remain within the vascular network. The primary functions of erythrocytes are to pick up inhaled oxygen from the lungs and transport it to the body’s tissues, and to pick up some (about 24 percent) carbon dioxide waste at the tissues and transport it to the lungs for exhalation. As you can imagine, they are quite small cells, with a mean diameter of only about 7–8 micrometers ( µm) ( ). In fact, erythrocytes are estimated to make up about 25 percent of the total cells in the body. Specifically, males have about 5.4 million erythrocytes per microliter ( µL) of blood, and females have approximately 4.8 million per µL. The erythrocyte, commonly known as a red blood cell (or RBC), is by far the most common formed element: A single drop of blood contains millions of erythrocytes and just thousands of leukocytes. Explain the composition and function of hemoglobin.Discuss the various steps in the lifecycle of an erythrocyte.By the end of this section, you will be able to: ![]()
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