2 questions :
Oct. 14th, 2002 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotz. . . that I'd actually quite like answers for.
I was talking to Buca Alan at B-Movie and for some reason we got onto the subject of erythrocyte respiration. I said that I was pretty sure that red cells only do anaerobic respiration, and that presumably this means that they don't have mitochondria. Amazingly, given the number of years since I studied this kind of thing, it seems to be true. I love this page. "The shunt provides the remainder", with no explanation of what the shunt is. Fantastic. Alan suggested that the metabolic crippling of red cells might be to avoid them becoming tumorous, as they have such regular exposure to molecular oxygen, with all its hazards. It's possible.
So . . . what's going on here, then? Why aren't there any, and what's the mechanism involved?
The second one is about feathers. How does a structure like a feather grow out of a little follicle?
Hmm. I may have to do some digging around on these ones.
I was talking to Buca Alan at B-Movie and for some reason we got onto the subject of erythrocyte respiration. I said that I was pretty sure that red cells only do anaerobic respiration, and that presumably this means that they don't have mitochondria. Amazingly, given the number of years since I studied this kind of thing, it seems to be true. I love this page. "The shunt provides the remainder", with no explanation of what the shunt is. Fantastic. Alan suggested that the metabolic crippling of red cells might be to avoid them becoming tumorous, as they have such regular exposure to molecular oxygen, with all its hazards. It's possible.
So . . . what's going on here, then? Why aren't there any, and what's the mechanism involved?
The second one is about feathers. How does a structure like a feather grow out of a little follicle?
Hmm. I may have to do some digging around on these ones.
