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
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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