BIOSCI 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Partial Pressure, Locus Control Region, Heme
4 Sep 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Lungs: total surface area of 70m2, total volume of 5l. Gas exchange occurs between the alveoli and capillaries, there are over 700,000,000 alveoli in the lungs. There is a mucus layer that protects the lungs and provides a wet surface for the oxygen to dissolve into and diffuse across the endothelial and pneumocytes. Rbc: very elastic due to protein network. Contains haemoglobin so blood isn"t too viscous and prevents toxicity. Biconcave disc, passes through the entire circulatory system in 25s, 120 life cycle. No nucleus or organelles so cannot repair itself. Protein of four subunits consisting of 2 alpha and 2 beta. Alpha genes are encoded on chromosome 16 while the beta are encoded on chromosome 11. Each of the globin genes consists of three exons and two introns. These genes are approximately 1500bp long, the alpha chain results in 141 amino acids while the beta chains are 146 amino acids.
