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Human bodies make 2 million red blood cells per second. They each live for 120 days and spend that time zooming completely around the body every 20 seconds, carrying oxygen from the lungs to other tissues and bringing back ...

Understanding the chemical communication between cells

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It's award season: Let's celebrate microbes in movies

Usually, show business depicts viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms as one of the worst menaces to humankind. Entertainment movies influence the way audiences understand and perceive these topics. Yet, few films accurately ...

Blood cell family trees trace how production changes with aging

Blood cells make up the majority of cells in the human body. They perform critical functions and their dysfunction is implicated in many important human diseases, from anemias to blood cancers like leukemia. The many types ...

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Red blood cell

Red blood cells are the most common type of blood cell and the vertebrate body's principal means of delivering oxygen to the body tissues via the blood. They take up oxygen in the lungs or gills and release it while squeezing through the body's capillaries. The cells are filled with hemoglobin, a biomolecule that can bind to oxygen. The blood's red color is due to the color of oxygen-rich hemoglobin. In humans, red blood cells develop in the bone marrow and live for about 120 days; they take the form of flexible biconcave disks that lack a cell nucleus and organelles and they cannot synthesize protein.

Red blood cells are also known as RBCs, red blood corpuscles (an archaic term), haematids or erythrocytes (from Greek erythros for "red" and kytos for "hollow", with cyte translated as "cell" in modern usage). The capitalized term Red Blood Cells is the proper name in the US for erythrocytes in storage solution used in transfusion medicine.

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