Blood Components
This liquid part of blood is about 90% water and carries dissolved substances.
What is plasma?
These vessels carry blood away from the heart.
What are arteries?
These structures on red blood cells determine whether a person belongs to a blood group.
What are antigens?
This gas is transported from the lungs to body cells for respiration.
What is oxygen?
These blood cells contain haemoglobin and transport oxygen around the body.
What is erythrocytes?
These vessels have valves that prevent the backflow of blood.
What are veins?
This blood group has neither A nor B antigens and is known as the universal donor.
What is blood group O?
This gas is transported from body cells back to the lungs for removal.
What is carbon dioxide?
These small cell fragments contain substances that help blood clot at wounds.
What is platelets?
These tiny vessels have walls only one cell thick, allowing substances to diffuse between the blood and tissues.
What are capillaries?
A person with this ABO blood group has no anti-A or anti-B antibodies and can receive blood from A, B, AB or O.
What is blood group AB?
These chemical messengers are transported in plasma from endocrine glands to the organs where they act.
What are hormones?
This type of white blood cell changes shape, surrounds microorganisms and digests.
What is phagocytes?
Their thick, elastic walls allow these vessels to withstand and smooth out the high-pressure surges.
What are arteries?
If group B blood is mistakenly given to a person with group A blood, this dangerous process occurs when antibodies cause red blood cells to stick together.
What is clumping/agglutination?
Humans need a circulatory transport system because most body cells are too far from the body’s external surfaces for which transport process alone to supply substances rapidly enough?
What is diffusion?
During clotting, thrombin converts this soluble plasma protein into insoluble fibrin.
What is fibrinogen?
Explain why capillary walls being only one cell thick is important for exchange with tissues.
It provides a short diffusion distance, allowing rapid exchange of substances such as oxygen, nutrients and wastes.
An RhD-negative mother carrying an RhD-positive fetus may develop these molecules after exposure to the baby’s RhD antigen.
What are anti-RhD antibodies?
Give two reasons why transport by blood is essential in a large multicellular organism.
It delivers substances such as oxygen/nutrients, removes wastes such as CO₂.