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Renal tubular cell
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After the kidney filters the blood, something has to recover what was still useful. That job belongs to the renal tubular cells, and the ones in the proximal convoluted tubule are built for exactly that. They form a simple cuboidal epithelium, which is a single layer of cube-shaped cells, and their job is to absorb and transport water, electrolytes, meaning the body's salts, and other dissolved substances.
Under the microscope you recognize them by three details that are pure engineering. The side facing the filtered fluid has a brush border, a fuzzy fringe made of microvilli, which are tiny hairs of the cell itself: because of them a single cell contacts far more fluid, just as a terry cloth towel dries better than a flat rag of the same size. Lined up at the other end, the one resting on the cell's base, are long thin mitochondria, the cell's power plants. And inside there are many vesicles, little transport sacs. Around the tube run the peritubular capillaries, the vessels that collect what was rescued and return it to the blood: water, ions, and the other recovered substances.
In brief
Proximal convoluted tubule cells form a simple cuboidal epithelium devoted to absorbing and transporting water, electrolytes, and other solutes.
They are recognized by a brush border of microvilli that expands the surface area in contact with the ultrafiltrate, by long thin mitochondria at the basal pole, and by transport vesicles.
The brush border does what a terry cloth towel does: it touches far more surface.
The peritubular capillaries that surround the tubule recover the reabsorbed water, ions, and other plasma constituents.
Sources (1)
- National Center for Biotechnology InformationHistology, Nephron. StatPearls
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