February 16, 2019 Saturday
Bedtime Story
The Topmost Layer
Last night we were dealing with the whitish
layer of the four layers that form when a sample of anti-coagulated blood is
either left standing or in modern days centrifuged.
This layer chiefly consists of all the
white blood cells and thrombocytes.
The platelets or thrombocytes (like the
white blood cells) too form a small portion of mammalian blood volume and are
normally found in the ratio range of 1:10 to 1:20 with respect to
erythrocytes.
Finally the last or the topmost layer is
the clear and transparent yellow serum or plasma.
Plasma is the liquid part of blood that
carries all the blood cells and proteins throughout the body.
It forms nearly 55% of the body’s total
blood volume and hence is the tallest column fraction in the centrifuged sample
of anti-coagulated blood.
Though I have used words “serum” and
“plasma” synonymously in actual fact there is a subtle but crucial distinction
between them.
Blood plasma from which proteins that are
involved in the clotting process have been removed is known as blood serum.
Therefore Blood Serum = Blood Plasma –
Clotting Factors
But even though it lacks the clotting
factors serum contains all the other proteins such as antigens, antibodies,
hormones, electrolytes and exogenous substances such as drugs including alcohol
and microbes.
This makes serum an invaluable source for
the detection of biomarkers.
Now what are these biomarkers?
A biomarker is any traceable substance that
is found either naturally within an organism or introduced into an organism
either iatrogenically or through natural but unwanted processes such as
infections or injuries that is an indicator of the biological state or the
condition of the organism.
For instance let us consider the case of an
ischemic cardiac event and the cardiac markers or biomarkers that are released
by the cardiac cells and therefore serve as an aid to diagnose an acute event.
During an acute ischemic event if the
ischemia (loss of blood supply) is long enough a cascade of process is
initiated that is known as ischemic cascade.
Cascade anywhere in biology refers to a
series or a chain of biochemical reactions that proceed in a liner fashion one
after the other.
The truth is that such cascades are not always
necessarily linear as often multiple factors come into play that take away the
“linearity” though for our bedtime story sake we shall assume such cascades to
be strictly linear.
The ischemic cascade though acute and occurs
within hours of the event can continue for days even after the tissue is
re-perfused.
It is as if once the trigger in cells for
the cascade is switched on they reach a point of no return.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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