Library · Histology
Kidney histology
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Under the microscope, the kidney repeats the same working unit over and over, and that unit has two halves.
The first is the renal corpuscle, which is where blood is filtered. It is made of the glomerulus, a tangle of vessels, and Bowman capsule, the pouch that wraps around it. The second is the tubules, the ducts that come next and take care of recovering what is useful, which is reabsorption, and getting rid of what is not, which is excretion. Between them, the corpuscle and the tubules do most of the kidney's work.
The tangled shape of the glomerulus is not a whim of design. By coiling into loops, the capillaries pack a great deal of vessel into very little space and create an enormous surface for filtering, the way a long hose folds up inside a small box.
And to come out filtered, blood has to cross three structures in a row: the capillary endothelium, the capillary's inner lining; the podocytes, cells with long extensions that wrap around the capillary and support it; and the fused basement membranes that sit between the two.
In brief
The renal corpuscle, the filtration unit made up of the glomerulus and the surrounding Bowman capsule, together with the tubules that handle reabsorption and excretion, performs most of the kidney's work.
The glomerular capillaries form a central tuft of looped vessels that delivers blood and creates a large surface area for filtration.
The glomerular filtration barrier comprises three structures: the capillary endothelium, the podocytes, and the fused basement membranes.
Sources (1)
- National Center for Biotechnology InformationHistology, Kidney and Glomerulus. StatPearls
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