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Adrenal medullary cell
Make it clearer
The adrenal gland is a small gland that sits on top of each kidney, and it has two parts that do not do the same thing. The outer one is the cortex. The inner one is the medulla, and it is made of clusters of chromaffin cells, the ones that manufacture the catecholamines: epinephrine and norepinephrine.
The striking part is where they come from. These cells do not arise from the cortex around them: they come from the neural crest, a tissue in the embryo. And they still behave like relatives of a neuron, because the sympathetic nervous system, the one that switches on in an emergency, controls how much they release. A nerve talks to this gland the same way it would talk to another neuron.
And the catecholamines they release help carry out the fight-or-flight response. Among other things, they raise blood pressure by acting on the alpha-1 receptors of the smooth muscle in blood vessels, that is, on the involuntary muscle that wraps around the arteries.
In brief
The adrenal gland has a cortex and a medulla; the medulla is made of clusters of chromaffin cells and produces the catecholamines epinephrine and norepinephrine.
These cells come not from the cortex but from the neural crest, and the sympathetic nervous system controls their secretion.
A nerve talks to this gland the same way it would talk to another neuron.
The catecholamines they release help carry out the sympathetic fight-or-flight response and raise blood pressure through alpha-1 receptors on vascular smooth muscle.
Sources (1)
- National Center for Biotechnology Information, StatPearls PublishingPhysiology, Adrenal Gland, StatPearlsPublished
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