Red blood cells are the most common type of blood cell and the vertebrate body's principal means of delivering oxygen from the lungs or gills to body tissues via the blood.


Human red blood cellsRed blood cells are also known as RBCs, haematids or erythrocytes (from Greek erythros for "red" and kytos for "hollow", with cyte nowadays translated as "cell"). RBCs should more properly be referred to as "corpuscles" rather than "cells", as a cells contains a nucleus while mature RBCs in mammals do not.

A schistocyte is a red blood cell undergoing fragmentation, or a fragmented part of a red blood cell.

Erythrocytes consist mainly of hemoglobin, a complex molecule containing heme groups whose iron atoms temporarily link to oxygen molecules in the lungs or gills and release them throughout the body. Oxygen can easily diffuse through the red blood cell's cell membrane. Hemoglobin also carries some of the waste product carbon dioxide back from the tissues. (In humans, less than 2% of the total oxygen, and most of the carbon dioxide, is held in solution in the blood plasma). A related compound, myoglobin, acts to store oxygen in muscle cells.

The color of erythrocytes is due to the heme group of hemoglobin. The blood plasma alone is straw-colored, but the red blood cells change color depending on the state of the hemoglobin: when combined with oxygen the resulting oxyhemoglobin is scarlet, and when oxygen has been released the resulting deoxyhemoglobin is darker, appearing bluish through the vessel wall and skin. Pulse oximetry takes advantage of this color change to directly measure the arterial blood oxygen saturation using colorimetric techniques.

The sequestration of oxygen carrying proteins inside cells (rather than having them dissolved in body fluid) was an important step in the evolution of vertebrates; it allows for less viscous blood and higher concentrations of oxygen.

In 2007 it was reported that erythrocytes also play a part in the body's immune response: when lysed by pathogens such as bacteria, their hemoglobin releases free radicals that break down the pathogen's cell wall and membrane, killing it.
Erythrocytes in mammals are anucleate when mature, meaning that they lack a cell nucleus and thus have no DNA. In comparison, the erythrocytes of nearly all other vertebrates have nuclei; the only known exception being salamanders of the Batrachoseps genus.[3] Mammalian erythrocytes also lose their other organelles including their mitochondria and produce energy by fermentation, via glycolysis of glucose followed by lactic acid production. Furthermore, red cells do not have an insulin receptor and thus glucose uptake is not regulated by insulin. As a result of the lack of nucleus and organelles, the cells cannot produce new structural or repair proteins or enzymes and their lifespan is limited.

Mammalian erythrocytes are biconcave disks: flattened and depressed in the center, with a dumbbell-shaped cross section. This shape (as well as the loss of organelles and nucleus) optimizes the cell for the exchange of oxygen with its surroundings. The cells are flexible so as to fit through tiny capillaries, where they release their oxygen load. Erythrocytes are circular, except in the camel family Camelidae, where they are oval.

In large blood vessels, red blood cells sometimes occur as a stack, flat side next to flat side. This is known as rouleaux formation, and it occurs more often if the levels of certain serum proteins are elevated, as for instance during inflammation.

The spleen acts as a reservoir of red blood cells, but this effect is somewhat limited in humans. In some other mammals such as dogs and horses, the spleen sequesters large numbers of red blood cells which are dumped into the blood during times of exertion stress, yielding a higher oxygen transport capacity.

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