The Bone marrow is a soft tissue inside our bones, that is slightly fatter and and produces blood cells. All the different blood cells in our body rise through the stem cells in the bone marrow. These cells, which are immature at first, grow into different blood cells that facilitate all the functions of our system. The bone marrow makes up for around 4 percent of the entire body weight, which is around 3 kgs in a healthy person.
The Bone Marrow is of Two Types:
- Red bone marrow: The red marrow is the chief inspector responsible for the production of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets.
- Yellow bone marrow: Yellow bone marrow mostly consists of fat cells
Not just that, a number of capillaries and blood vessels travel through the bone marrow and make it into a vascular organ.
When a child is born, the bone marrow is red. However, once the person starts to age, a large part of the marrow turns yellow. Only about half of the bone marrow in adults is red in and the other half is yellow.
What are the diverse functions of our Bone Marrow?
- It creates erythrocytes, commonly known as red blood cells which carry oxygen to the tissues in the body.
- Thrombocytes or platelets that exist in the marrow, prevent excessive bleeding and help in the clotting of blood.
- Myeloid cells, i.e, Granulocytes and Macrophages fight bacterial and fungal infections. They so protect the body from parasites and remove dead cells and help in remodeling bones and tissues.
- The marrow has T-lymphocytes that can isolate and kill invading cells and B-lymphocytes produce antibodies that that protect against such cells.
- Red blood cells exist in a human being for around 180 days and some last for a very limited number of days. Hence these blood cells need to be replenished on a continuous basis. Almost every adult human being requires a hundred billion brand new hematopoietic cells every single day. This job is carried out by Hematopoietic Stem Cells in the bone marrow.
Stem Cells
The bone marrow contains a number of things and one part of it includes stem cells. During the procedure of a Bone Marrow Transplant in india, new stem cells are introduced in the body of the person undergoing the transplant, with the help of a donor. These stem cells are immature cells that can change into different types of cells. The bone marrow mostly consists of two types of stem cells, i.e., hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells.
The hematopoietic cells are all different and vary in how fast they regenerate and how potent they exactly are. These cells give rise to more cells, of which the two main types are: lymphoid and myeloid lineages. These include a variety of cells including natural killer cells, B cells and T cells.
When it comes to potency, some cells are multipotent, unipotent or are oligopotent. The potency determines how many different types of cells can be created.