• Question: How are Red Blood Cells created?

    Asked by Bradley to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 20 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Red blood cells are made by a process called “erythropoiesis” (literally the greek for “the making of red blood cells!”) which occurs in the bone marrow and is regulated by a hormone called erythropoietin. It all starts from a special stem cell called a haemocytoblast with differentiates (=divides and changes into) into a multipotent stem cell (a stem cell that can become many things!). This then differentiates into a myeloid progenitor (i.e the father of the myeloid cell type). You then get a lot more differentiation (shown below):

      myeloid progenitor => proerythroblast => basophilic erythroblast => poluchromatic erythroblast => orthochromatic erythroblast.

      At this stage, the nucleus is removed (because red blood cells are the only cell type without nuclei or mitochondria!) and the cell becomes a reticulocyte, before becoming a red blood cell!

      Once it becomes a red blood cell, it is released into the blood circulation.

      Phew! It’s quite complicated because each cell type in the chain can become a whole bunch of other cells as well.

    • Photo: Sian Thomas

      Sian Thomas answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      And of course the whole process is dependent on people having sufficient iron in the diet to make the red blood cells effective at carrying oxygen.

      Iron is one of the micronutrients that some people find hard to consume enough of. It is typically found in meat, green vegetables and apricots.

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