Histology - Blog Posts

This is the most simplified I could make it... Here’s a histology “slide” of a human adrenal gland for y’all who “don’t do cells.” (Placement may be a bit inaccurate, cause I stole this from a borrowed notebook.)

Fun fact: I once had someone try to argue with me that the adrenal gland is a “kidney warmer” that does not actually produce hormones, because “it doesn’t look like a real organ.”

⋆˙⟡ ⊹ ♡⚕♡ ⊹ ⟡ ˙⋆

Here we go again

Tough day but who'll kick that ass except me

Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) seminal vesicle

Dr. Barbara Laurinyecz

Szeged, Hungary

Technique: Confocal, Fluorescence (600x)

Marrow Christmas and a Happy New Smear!

A very seasonal smear made from red marrow extracted from the iliac crest of a donor’s pelvis prior to transplantation.

Happy Holidays everyone

i♡histo

The image amazingly captures a single moment in time during the development of thousands of red and white blood cells.

Many of the small cells that are visible, like the ones forming the snowman’s carrot nose, do not have a nucleus. These are brand new erythrocytes (red blood cells) that are ready to exit the bone and enter the blood stream.

The other, slightly larger cells that have nuclei, like the snowman’s eyes and his top button, are either precursors to these erythrocytes (they will mature and lose their nucleus) or are precursors to the other blood cells in our body, the leukocytes (white blood cells): lymphocytes, monocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils and basophils.

In addition, the bone marrow is home to the cells that form platelets. These are huge multinucleated cells aptly named megakaryocytes - perhaps the cell at the bottom right.

It is possible to identify each mature cell and its precursor based upon its morphology and staining at higher magnification. High or low levels of these cells can indicate disease or cancers of the blood.