Understanding Blood Components and Functions

Hey, in this video we're talking about the components of the blood and it might actually be helpful to have some blood here to show in the video. So let me get a quick sample with this really legit syringe here. Ooh, ow, that hurt. Alright. So here I have a sample of blood and it may just look like water and food coloring that I got from the lab But in reality, there's a whole bunch of interesting stuff in there. There's different types of cells red and white blood cells There's platelets and fibrinogen which will help clot the blood and prevent bleeding if we get injured and there's all kinds of other stuff that needs to get around throughout the body such as hormones salts waste oxygen nutrients like sugar and fat and stuff that we eat and it's all right there in this totally legitimate vial of blood that i'm holding in my hands right now let's jump to the whiteboard and get started. All right, so this vial of blood that I got for my arm, it looks uniform throughout, but let's say we put this into a machine called a centrifuge. That's going to take the sample of blood and it's going to spin it around in a circle really, really fast until all of the things that are heavier or technically more dense end up to the end of the test tube and everything that's lighter or less dense ends up towards the top of the test tube. We'd have all the red blood cells down on the bottom. We'd have a layer of white, which would include the white blood cells and platelets, and we'd have a yellow layer at the top. which is our blood plasma. That's all the liquid in our blood. So we have red blood cells here, we have white blood cells and platelets, and then we have our blood plasma at the top. We're going to go through each of those three layers, starting with the red blood cells and working our way up. So we have red blood cells in our blood. We call red blood cells erythrocytes. It just means red cell. Erythro for red and cyte for cell. I think the red blood cells look like Werther's original candy. Do y'all know what I'm talking about? It's the kind of candy that you find at like your grandparents'house. Or sort of like a donut, but the middle part's sort of filled in. And the red specifically... because of a molecule inside them called hemoglobin. That root word hemo just means blood. And hemoglobin is a protein found in the red blood cells and its job is to bind to oxygen and carbon dioxide. One of the most important things that our blood does is transport oxygen and CO2. The oxygen, of course, we breathe in and we need to get that throughout the whole body to all of our cells so that they can undergo cellular respiration and create ATP, which our body can then use for energy. And as our founding father, Patrick Henry Globin said, give me oxygen. or give me death. Pretty good, huh? I thought of that joke all on my own. What, you didn't think that was funny? So those red blood cells are filled with the hemoglobin protein. That protein will bind to the oxygen to transport it around. And then to take out the garbage, so to speak, it'll bind with the CO2 as well. That's a byproduct of cellular respiration. In other words, our cells use oxygen, but they have CO2 as a waste product that we have to get rid of. So the CO2 will also bind to the hemoglobin so that we can transport that out to our alveoli and our lungs and then... get that out of the body when we breathe out. Those red blood cells, if you take them out, would represent about 45% by volume of our total blood. The next layer here in white is made up of leukocytes and platelets. Let's start with leukocytes. These are white blood cells. White blood cells have nothing to do with transporting oxygen or CO2 like the red blood cells do. They have a completely separate function, which is fighting off bacteria and viruses and basically any pathogens that get into our body that our body needs to get rid of. They're really immune system cells. Now we have five different types of leukocytes. types of white blood cells which you can see here but for this video i'm just going to categorize them all sort of as the same thing they all work together to fight off bacteria and pathogens in the body notice a couple things there are fewer white blood cells i only drew one in my diagram compared to 15 red blood cells but even that scale is not quite there there's something like 500 to 700 times more red blood cells than white blood cells in your bloodstream so your blood is mostly red cells although the white cells are bigger somewhere around three to four times bigger than our red blood cells and And that term leukocyte, leuko just means white and cyte means cell. So it just means white cells. Now, the other component of this thin white layer that we call the buffy coat are the platelets. Platelets aren't considered full cells. They're sort of a byproduct of the cell making process. They sort of have like a rounded exterior there. But the purpose of the platelets is to help with clotting. So if you go in order of what do we have the most of, we have more red blood cells. We have fewer platelets and then fewer white blood cells. And platelets are the smallest. Now, whenever clotting occurs, the platelets are going to activate. and the platelets will look more like this where they have these sort of spindly arms or appendages sticking out of them and that's going to help them grab onto red blood cells in order to form a clot a clot is just going to be a clump of red blood cells platelets and a protein we'll see in a second called fibrinogen where they all stick together to clog up a hole in an artery in order to prevent bleeding now blood clots of course can be bad and if you get a blood clot that breaks off and it clogs up an artery it can cause a heart attack or an ischemic stroke or a pulmonary embolism lots of really bad things but normally clotting is a good thing it's going to prevent us from just bleeding continually so so far we have red blood cells which carry oxygen and carbon dioxide which bond to the protein hemoglobin inside the red blood cells we have white blood cells which fight off bacteria and pathogens and we have platelets which help with the clotting process now let's move to this 55% layer that makes up the majority of our blood and that's our blood plasma you can think of plasma as the liquid part of our blood and it's made up mostly of water somewhere around 90% of our plasma is water. The rest of that 10% of our plasma is going to be all the stuff that's dissolved in the water. And I want to talk about that in two categories. First, the proteins that are in there and then everything else. The first protein I want to talk about is called albumins. Albumins are really good at pulling water. They're actually the most abundant protein that we have in our bloodstream and they're gonna pull water in they're gonna help Maintain our blood pressure where it needs to be they'll help with water retention So that we don't get too much swelling and stuff in our tissue and it helps me to remember this if I think albumin start with a and so does aqua or agua Abumens help retain water in the blood up next we have a class of proteins called globulins globulins are antibodies This is going to be a protein that's going to help fight off bacteria and viruses and things that make into our body similarly to the white blood cells and in fact we have a type of white blood cells b lymphocytes that make antibodies it's a huge part of our body's immune response in fact i'm about to go get my first dose of the coded vaccine tomorrow and after i get that vaccine my body is going to start making antibodies these globulins that are specific to the receptors that are found on the coronavirus so if i do come into contact with coronavirus my body will already have antibodies ready to go to fight off that virus so here my diagram i have some of those globulins or antibodies drawn and they're sort of y-shaped like that and let's say that we have a bacteria that's gotten into my bloodstream well those antibodies produced by a white blood cell are going to find that bacteria and they're going to start to bind to it which will do two things one it'll start to disable that bacteria or virus so it can't do its function and two it will alert other white blood cells such as macrophages that will actually come in and do endocytosis on that bacteria basically eating the bacteria so it can bombard it with chemicals to destroy it our immune system is really cool by the way making antibodies eating bacteria and destroying them we've got something called killer T cells which are pretty cool but that's all for another video just know for now that globulins are antibodies and they fight off pathogens that get into our blood finally the third type of protein that we have in our bloodstream are called fibrinogen fibrinogen are these long molecules like this and they actually bind together to form these long streams that we call fibrin so these fibrin molecules that have drawn right here are made up these fibrinogen and five fibrinogen literally means to generate or produce fibrin it kind of acts as a rope that's gonna bind the red blood cells and the platelets together in order to help form that clot better so here in a blood clot we've got three main components we've got red blood cells platelets and then fibrin which is a protein that's holding them all together so albumins globulins and fibrinogens those are the three types of proteins that we have in our bloodstream now last but not least the whole purpose of the bloodstream in our cardiovascular system is to transport things around throughout the body so there's a bunch of other stuff in our plasma that needs to get around first we have salts that's going to be sodium potassium calcium magnesium chlorine basically anything that you find on the first two columns of the periodic table or the second to last column on the periodic table the halogens that could be salt that we eat in our food sodium chloride but not just that type of salt any salts that are in our diet sodium potassium and calcium of course being really important for lots of processes in our bodies such as action potential synapses developing our bones muscle contractions super important we can get these throughout the body nutrients are traveling through our blood that's going to be proteins fatty acids and sugars basically everything that we use for energy and building blocks for our molecules that's got to get around different parts of the body through the bloodstream next our endocrine system uses the cardiovascular system our bloodstream to get its hormones around where they need to go so we have hormones flowing throughout our bloodstream as well finally we have waste in our bloodstream anything that our cells make that we need to get rid of or anything in our diet that made into our bloodstream that our body can't use, we're gonna filter it out through the kidneys and get rid of it that way so that it's no longer in our body. All right, let's do a quick recap of all of this. Our blood contains the red blood cells. That's about 45% of our blood. Those are also known as erythrocytes and they contain hemoglobin, which is a protein that's going to bind with carbon dioxide and oxygen in order to transport that throughout the body. Basically, hemoglobin allows us to carry lots more oxygen and CO2 than we otherwise would be able to get into our bloodstream. Up next, we have the white blood cells, which are immune system cells that are going to help fight off bacteria and pathogens and keep our body safe. We have platelets, which are little cell byproducts that are going to help with the clotting process. Those platelets are also known as thrombocytes, thrombo meaning clotting. and site meaning cell, so it literally means a cell for clotting. And 55% of our blood is the blood plasma. That's mostly water. About 90% of the plasma is water. We have three important protein types. Those include albumins, which are going to help retain water in the blood. We have globulins, which are going to help fight off bacteria and pathogens. Those are made by certain types of white blood cells. And we have fibrinogens, which are a protein that will bind together to form fibrin, which are going to bind together the red blood cells and platelets whenever we're forming a clot. And clots, while they can sometimes be bad, are generally good for us because they're going to help stop bleeding whenever we have a wound. And finally, our bloodstream is going to transport important things like salts, nutrients, hormones, and waste, so that all those things can get to the different parts of the body where they need to be. Did y'all know that I'm a vampire? Ah, tasty. Just kidding, I didn't drink my blood. Also, it's not blood, it's water and red food coloring.

There's different types of cells red and white blood cells There's platelets and fibrinogen which will help clot the blood and prevent bleeding if we get injured and there's all kinds of other stuff that needs to get around throughout the body such as hormones salts waste oxygen nutrients like sugar and fat and stuff that we eat and it's all right there in this totally legitimate vial of blood that i'm holding in my hands right now let's jump to the whiteboard and get started. All right, so this vial of blood that I got for my arm, it looks uniform throughout, but let's say we put this into a machine called a centrifuge. That's going to take the sample of blood and it's going to spin it around in a circle really, really fast until all of the things that are heavier or technically more dense end up to the end of the test tube and everything that's lighter or less dense ends up towards the top of the test tube. We'd have all the red blood cells down on the bottom.

We'd have a layer of white, which would include the white blood cells and platelets, and we'd have a yellow layer at the top. which is our blood plasma. That's all the liquid in our blood. So we have red blood cells here, we have white blood cells and platelets, and then we have our blood plasma at the top.

We're going to go through each of those three layers, starting with the red blood cells and working our way up. So we have red blood cells in our blood. We call red blood cells erythrocytes.

It just means red cell. Erythro for red and cyte for cell. I think the red blood cells look like Werther's original candy.

Do y'all know what I'm talking about? It's the kind of candy that you find at like your grandparents'house. Or sort of like a donut, but the middle part's sort of filled in.

And the red specifically... because of a molecule inside them called hemoglobin. That root word hemo just means blood.

And hemoglobin is a protein found in the red blood cells and its job is to bind to oxygen and carbon dioxide. One of the most important things that our blood does is transport oxygen and CO2. The oxygen, of course, we breathe in and we need to get that throughout the whole body to all of our cells so that they can undergo cellular respiration and create ATP, which our body can then use for energy.

And as our founding father, Patrick Henry Globin said, give me oxygen. or give me death. Pretty good, huh? I thought of that joke all on my own. What, you didn't think that was funny?

So those red blood cells are filled with the hemoglobin protein. That protein will bind to the oxygen to transport it around. And then to take out the garbage, so to speak, it'll bind with the CO2 as well. That's a byproduct of cellular respiration.

In other words, our cells use oxygen, but they have CO2 as a waste product that we have to get rid of. So the CO2 will also bind to the hemoglobin so that we can transport that out to our alveoli and our lungs and then... get that out of the body when we breathe out. Those red blood cells, if you take them out, would represent about 45% by volume of our total blood. The next layer here in white is made up of leukocytes and platelets.

Let's start with leukocytes. These are white blood cells. White blood cells have nothing to do with transporting oxygen or CO2 like the red blood cells do. They have a completely separate function, which is fighting off bacteria and viruses and basically any pathogens that get into our body that our body needs to get rid of.

They're really immune system cells. Now we have five different types of leukocytes. types of white blood cells which you can see here but for this video i'm just going to categorize them all sort of as the same thing they all work together to fight off bacteria and pathogens in the body notice a couple things there are fewer white blood cells i only drew one in my diagram compared to 15 red blood cells but even that scale is not quite there there's something like 500 to 700 times more red blood cells than white blood cells in your bloodstream so your blood is mostly red cells although the white cells are bigger somewhere around three to four times bigger than our red blood cells and And that term leukocyte, leuko just means white and cyte means cell. So it just means white cells.

Now, the other component of this thin white layer that we call the buffy coat are the platelets. Platelets aren't considered full cells. They're sort of a byproduct of the cell making process. They sort of have like a rounded exterior there.

But the purpose of the platelets is to help with clotting. So if you go in order of what do we have the most of, we have more red blood cells. We have fewer platelets and then fewer white blood cells. And platelets are the smallest.

Now, whenever clotting occurs, the platelets are going to activate. and the platelets will look more like this where they have these sort of spindly arms or appendages sticking out of them and that's going to help them grab onto red blood cells in order to form a clot a clot is just going to be a clump of red blood cells platelets and a protein we'll see in a second called fibrinogen where they all stick together to clog up a hole in an artery in order to prevent bleeding now blood clots of course can be bad and if you get a blood clot that breaks off and it clogs up an artery it can cause a heart attack or an ischemic stroke or a pulmonary embolism lots of really bad things but normally clotting is a good thing it's going to prevent us from just bleeding continually so so far we have red blood cells which carry oxygen and carbon dioxide which bond to the protein hemoglobin inside the red blood cells we have white blood cells which fight off bacteria and pathogens and we have platelets which help with the clotting process now let's move to this 55% layer that makes up the majority of our blood and that's our blood plasma you can think of plasma as the liquid part of our blood and it's made up mostly of water somewhere around 90% of our plasma is water. The rest of that 10% of our plasma is going to be all the stuff that's dissolved in the water. And I want to talk about that in two categories.

First, the proteins that are in there and then everything else. The first protein I want to talk about is called albumins. Albumins are really good at pulling water. They're actually the most abundant protein that we have in our bloodstream and they're gonna pull water in they're gonna help Maintain our blood pressure where it needs to be they'll help with water retention So that we don't get too much swelling and stuff in our tissue and it helps me to remember this if I think albumin start with a and so does aqua or agua Abumens help retain water in the blood up next we have a class of proteins called globulins globulins are antibodies This is going to be a protein that's going to help fight off bacteria and viruses and things that make into our body similarly to the white blood cells and in fact we have a type of white blood cells b lymphocytes that make antibodies it's a huge part of our body's immune response in fact i'm about to go get my first dose of the coded vaccine tomorrow and after i get that vaccine my body is going to start making antibodies these globulins that are specific to the receptors that are found on the coronavirus so if i do come into contact with coronavirus my body will already have antibodies ready to go to fight off that virus so here my diagram i have some of those globulins or antibodies drawn and they're sort of y-shaped like that and let's say that we have a bacteria that's gotten into my bloodstream well those antibodies produced by a white blood cell are going to find that bacteria and they're going to start to bind to it which will do two things one it'll start to disable that bacteria or virus so it can't do its function and two it will alert other white blood cells such as macrophages that will actually come in and do endocytosis on that bacteria basically eating the bacteria so it can bombard it with chemicals to destroy it our immune system is really cool by the way making antibodies eating bacteria and destroying them we've got something called killer T cells which are pretty cool but that's all for another video just know for now that globulins are antibodies and they fight off pathogens that get into our blood finally the third type of protein that we have in our bloodstream are called fibrinogen fibrinogen are these long molecules like this and they actually bind together to form these long streams that we call fibrin so these fibrin molecules that have drawn right here are made up these fibrinogen and five fibrinogen literally means to generate or produce fibrin it kind of acts as a rope that's gonna bind the red blood cells and the platelets together in order to help form that clot better so here in a blood clot we've got three main components we've got red blood cells platelets and then fibrin which is a protein that's holding them all together so albumins globulins and fibrinogens those are the three types of proteins that we have in our bloodstream now last but not least the whole purpose of the bloodstream in our cardiovascular system is to transport things around throughout the body so there's a bunch of other stuff in our plasma that needs to get around first we have salts that's going to be sodium potassium calcium magnesium chlorine basically anything that you find on the first two columns of the periodic table or the second to last column on the periodic table the halogens that could be salt that we eat in our food sodium chloride but not just that type of salt any salts that are in our diet sodium potassium and calcium of course being really important for lots of processes in our bodies such as action potential synapses developing our bones muscle contractions super important we can get these throughout the body nutrients are traveling through our blood that's going to be proteins fatty acids and sugars basically everything that we use for energy and building blocks for our molecules that's got to get around different parts of the body through the bloodstream next our endocrine system uses the cardiovascular system our bloodstream to get its hormones around where they need to go so we have hormones flowing throughout our bloodstream as well finally we have waste in our bloodstream anything that our cells make that we need to get rid of or anything in our diet that made into our bloodstream that our body can't use, we're gonna filter it out through the kidneys and get rid of it that way so that it's no longer in our body. All right, let's do a quick recap of all of this.

Our blood contains the red blood cells. That's about 45% of our blood. Those are also known as erythrocytes and they contain hemoglobin, which is a protein that's going to bind with carbon dioxide and oxygen in order to transport that throughout the body. Basically, hemoglobin allows us to carry lots more oxygen and CO2 than we otherwise would be able to get into our bloodstream.

Up next, we have the white blood cells, which are immune system cells that are going to help fight off bacteria and pathogens and keep our body safe. We have platelets, which are little cell byproducts that are going to help with the clotting process. Those platelets are also known as thrombocytes, thrombo meaning clotting.

and site meaning cell, so it literally means a cell for clotting. And 55% of our blood is the blood plasma. That's mostly water.

About 90% of the plasma is water. We have three important protein types. Those include albumins, which are going to help retain water in the blood.

We have globulins, which are going to help fight off bacteria and pathogens. Those are made by certain types of white blood cells. And we have fibrinogens, which are a protein that will bind together to form fibrin, which are going to bind together the red blood cells and platelets whenever we're forming a clot.

And clots, while they can sometimes be bad, are generally good for us because they're going to help stop bleeding whenever we have a wound. And finally, our bloodstream is going to transport important things like salts, nutrients, hormones, and waste, so that all those things can get to the different parts of the body where they need to be. Did y'all know that I'm a vampire? Ah, tasty.

Just kidding, I didn't drink my blood. Also, it's not blood, it's water and red food coloring.

Transcript for:Understanding Blood Components and Functions

Transcript for:
Understanding Blood Components and Functions