Are the shapes of RBCs really important? People often say it’s to maximize surface area to volume ratio and thus the efficiency of oxygen diffusion from the blood plasma to all the hemoglobin in the RBC. I used to write that myself. I don’t believe it anymore, on at least two grounds: (1) The RBCs of birds have to be just as efficient as ours in transporting oxygen, if not more so because of the demands of flight. But bird RBCs are football-shaped with a big nucleus, so I don’t think RBC shape has anything to do with gas transport efficiency. Bird erythrocytes: (2) The only places that our RBCs load or unload oxygen is in the blood capillaries of the lungs and systemic tissues, and in both of these places, our RBCs don’t have that discoidal, biconcave shape. To squeeze through the capillaries, they become rounded, teardrop-shaped, or even folded over like a soft deflated air pillow folded double. The biconcave shape exists only in the larger ve...
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