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Lab-grown blood could (one day, maybe) save your life

Blood is essentially its own organ system...

In humans, it circulates along a 60,000-mile-long vascular freeway, distributing oxygen, cycling nutrients and hormones, removing waste, defending the immune system, distributing heat, and maintaining the body’s chemical and fluid balance as it travels. About one-twelfth of an adult body’s weight is owed to blood’s miracle blend of water, proteins, salts, sugars, fats, oxygen-rich red blood cells, and clot-inducing platelets.

In centuries past, physicians unsuccessfully tried substituting blood with beer, urine, salt water, and milk. But over the last decade, scientists have finally started to make breakthroughs in the medical…

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Articles of Interest

Blood in your veins is not blue – here’s why it’s always red

Sometimes blood can look blue through our skin. Maybe you’ve heard that blood is blue in our veins because when headed back to the lungs, it lacks oxygen. But this is wrong; human blood is never blue. The bluish color of veins is only an optical illusion. Blue light does not penetrate as far into tissue as red light. If the blood vessel is sufficiently deep, your eyes see more blue than red reflected light due to the blood’s partial absorption of red wavelengths.

Explainer: what’s actually in our blood?

About 45% of our blood consists of different types of cells and the other 55% is plasma, a pale yellow fluid. Blood transports nutrients, hormones, proteins, vitamins and minerals around our body, suspended in the plasma. They provide energy to our cells and also signal for growth and tissue repair. The average adult has about five litres of blood.

In the Future, We Could Make Human Blood in Factories

Apparently a blood factory could look a bit like an oil refinery or a brewery.

Seven things you might not know about blood

Blood is fascinating. Many people learn at school that its function is to transport oxygen and nutrients around the body and remove waste products. But blood has many more functions, including defence against pathogens, regulating our temperature, and keeping important internal chemicals and nutrients balanced.

The Healthy Human Blood Microbiome: Fact or Fiction?

The blood that flows perpetually through our veins and arteries performs numerous functions essential to our survival. Besides distributing oxygen, this vast circulatory system facilitates nutrient transport, deters infection and dispenses heat throughout our bodies.