Frog Blood Under The Microscope 🐸🔬

Following the previous post on human blood cells, let us check out frog blood cells under the microscope. Straight away we can see a couple of differences. The size is different, the shape is different and most importantly, the frog red blood cells all have a nucleus!! Doesn’t it remind you of passion fruit seeds or basil seeds that had been soaked in water?

Let’s investigate to see why frog red blood cells have nucleus.

The red blood cells are a little different in the frog - they have a nucleus. These cells do divide unlike ours. Frog's white blood cells are very much the same as ours and serve the same function. Try to look for the platelets. Can't find any? There are none! Frog's don't produce fragments like we do.

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Dam that is pretty cool, since DNA is stored in the nucleus that means frog red blood cells can divide on their own! Yet they do not have platelets like us, instead they have thrombocytes that pretty much does the same thing as platelets. Its function is to stop bleeding by creating clots.

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Although upon my search on why frogs have nucleated red blood cells, I stumbled across this information which I found very interesting and made more sense. It is why human red blood cells, under the microscope, do not show any nucleus.

All cells need a nucleus for replication and maturation. Red blood cells also have a nucleus during their stages of development. Since this occurs in the bone marrow we do not normally see these nucleated red blood cells in the circulation. As the red blood cell matures and is ready to leave the bone marrow, it extrudes (spits out) its nucleus.

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Now lies another question, what happens to the nucleus it spits out?

Hang on, I should know that answer. I now remember I’ve read this somewhere during my studies. Obviously if you don’t use the information you learn, you tend to forget it.

But look at how smart our body is. By removing the nucleus from the red blood cell before it enters the system, it changes the shape of the cell (to concave) which allows it to carry more oxygen. Talk about being productive.