One choice they made in Cells at Work was showing the Red Blood Cells as the general "delivery people" of the body, bringing in O2 and removing CO2, delivering sugar from the stomach, etc You can see why they did it but it's a missed opportunity to look at some cool biology imo
-
-
Insects and worms and things have clear blood because they're small enough and use little enough oxygen they can survive having it dissolved directly in their blood Really big bugs, like crustaceans and tarantulas etc, use a chemical dissolved in the blood to bind O2, hemocyanin
Show this thread -
But vertebrates like us use so much of the stuff we need a purpose-built containment system, the red blood cell, to contain the protein, hemoglobin, that contains all the O2 we use
Show this thread -
The production of red blood cells in the marrow (as seen on the show) is an enormously expensive process but it's necessary We need that much O2 to burn through the energy we do (a dog or cat's muscles burn much hotter than a spider, which is why we don't have cat-size spiders)
Show this thread -
And if that O2 weren't kept carefully contained it would destroy us The Red Blood Cells in the show should be thought of as the equivalent of hazmat workers each transporting a cargo of deadly explosive Each erythrocyte is the equivalent of a ticking bomb
Show this thread -
Which would totally add to the stress the protagonist RBC experiences on the show And it means that they actually *aren't* "defenseless" against bacteria - a bacterium that tries to eat a RBC is in fact often horribly killed by the free radicals released by hemoglobin
Show this thread -
Having one of the germs try to eat Red Blood Cell only to accidentally puncture her container of O2 and have the germ go up in flames and horribly burn to death would be a pretty cool image for the show
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.