DailyDirt: What Kind Of Blood Do You Have?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, May 10th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Artificial human blood could make medicine a whole lot easier -- with no more blood drives or inefficient blood matching and possible harmful immune responses to blood transfusions. But until we perfect a way to grow human blood instead of siphoning it out of other people's veins, we're stuck with a somewhat tricky supply chain of a vital fluid. Researchers and vampires are very interested in the field of blood, and if you're not too queasy, check out these links.

Maybe you think you know your specific blood type: it's A, B, AB or O with some positive or negative thing. Well, blood genomics can get a lot more specific than that. More than 300 blood proteins exist, and 35 of them seem to be medically important so far. Tests on blood DNA could more precisely describe people's blood types, but it's not clear yet how much all these variations matter. [url]
Some rare blood types are more valuable than others. Only a few dozen people with Rh_null blood (aka the golden blood) are known, and their blood is an extraordinarily 'universal' blood type that can be donated to a wide population of people because it doesn't trigger an immune response. (On the downside, the people with this blood type have very few donors available to them.) [url]
Human blood is red, and so is most of the blood from animals that people commonly see. However, some other animals can have blue, green or purple blood. So if you thought Klingon blood was a ridiculous color, think again? [url]

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Filed Under: biology, blood, blood type, dna, genomics, golden blood, health, klingon, medicine

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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 10 May 2016 @ 5:36pm

Haemoglobin And Chlorophyll ...
... both contain the same structure of four pyrrole rings in a ring (yes, a ring of rings) with a metal atom in the middle. In blood (the “haem” part of the molecule) this metal is iron; in plants, it is magnesium.

The difference in colour (red versus green) comes down to that metal atom.
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Lloyd Old, 10 May 2016 @ 6:01pm

"their blood is an extraordinarily 'universal' blood type that can be donated to a wide population of people because it doesn't trigger an immune response." This is completely false--get a new science fact checker. They don't trigger an immune response to the Rh protein, but any other protein in blood is fair game.
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CharlieBrown, 10 May 2016 @ 7:17pm

Ants
Citation needed but as far as I know, ants actually have clear blood.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2016 @ 8:55pm

Re: Haemoglobin And Chlorophyll ...
I inherited a rare condition in which instead of a ring of pyrrole rings, my hemoglobin* is structurally an instance of Antoine's Necklace. Makes it difficult for doctors to take a sample in finite time, but the up side is that I can't bleed to death.

* - I'm in the US, so US spelling. Using 'extra' vowels lands us on the Do Not Fly list.
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A turnip, 10 May 2016 @ 9:00pm

What Kind Of Blood Do You Have?
Not even trying to hide your bigotry, are you? Insensitive bastard.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2016 @ 2:11am

Re: Haemoglobin And Chlorophyll ...
So what? What is your point? Speak up boy.
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