the nephron is the functional unit of the kidney but how does it work what is its structure like and what is the function that's what we're going to be talking about in this video so let's do it up leslie samuel here from interactive biology tv where we're making biology fun and i want to get into this nephron we know it's the functional unit of the kidney this is where all of the processing is really happening we're talking about the process of filtration the blood gets filtered and we get this filtrate then we have to reabsorb the good stuff back into the body we also have to do some secretion getting bad stuff out of the blood and into this forming urine so that we can eliminate it from the body by setting it as urine down to the bladder and then out via the urethra into the toilet or wherever it is you're taking a pee now to understand how this happens we have to look at the structure of the nephron the first place i want to start is by with this structure right here which is called the renal corpuscle this is a structure that is made up of two main things number one we have the glomerulus we spoke about this when we were talking about the blood supply to the kidney and we spoke about the fact that this is where the filtration is actually happening and when the blood gets filtered it goes into the second part of the renal corpuscle which is the bauman's capsule so we're filtering the blood from the glomerulus and creating this filtrate that gets into the bowman's capsule and then from there you can see that we have these tubes that go throughout the rest of the nephron the first is the proximal convoluted tubule it's called convoluted because it kind of goes back and forth in different ways and it's kind of convoluted and in that tube we have some reabsorption happening but we also have some secretion happening as a reminder reabsorption we're taking some of the good stuff that got into this filtrate and reabsorbing it taking it back into the blood supply so they can go to the rest of the body and with secretion we're taking some of the bad stuff that's still in the blood and we're actively pushing it or pumping it into this tubule so that it can leave the body from there we go into this loop that is called the loop of henle you can see we have a descending limb and we have an ascending limb and this is where more reabsorption is happening remember we're taking more stuff out of that filtrate so that i can go back to the blood and be used by the body because it's good stuff from there we're gonna go into our distal convoluted tubule you can see it's kind of convoluted and it's called distal because it's farther away from the start which is where the proximal convoluted tubule is proximal means nearby and distal means further away that's just another way for you to remember it we're going to have more reabsorption happening here we're going to have more secretion that is happening here and from this what is remaining is going to go into the collecting duct this is where we're basically collecting the urine and yes there's still going to be some reabsorption happening here remember when we filter this blood we're producing a ton of filtrate about 180 liters per day you don't want to pee that much and there's a lot of good stuff in there so we need to reabsorb that back into the body but then in the end we have this urine that is now produced and it goes via the collecting duct now we have between one to two million nephrons in each kidney and all of these are going through the same process and then all of these collecting ducts are collecting the urine and then leading that urine to the renal pelvis and then as you can see from there it's gonna go via the ureters down to the bladder where it gets stored and then when it's time to use the restroom the urethra is going to allow for that urine to go out of the body into the toilet or into the bushes but the important part is happening in the nephron we have the filtration reabsorption secretion and elimination resulting in getting rid of all that bad stuff that's in your blood now as i said the glomerulus is where the filtration is really happening and for us to really understand what's happening in the nephron we have to take a deeper look at what's happening in the glomerulus in the next video we're going to dive into the glomerular filtration rate and the factors that influence that so check me out in that video