Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
CELL DEATH
______________ CELL DEATH: ____________ _ The image shows webbed hand due to apoptosis abnormalities. It is important that inter-digital cell death happens otherwise a webbed limb will develop rather than a five digit limb. _ The image shows paw of a mouse embryo that has been stained with a dye that specifically labels cells that have undergone apoptosis. The apoptotic cells appear as bright green dots between the developing digits. _ As a tadpole changes into a frog, the cells in the tadpole tail are induced to undergo apoptosis; as a consequence, the tail is lost. All the changes that occur during metamorphosis, including the induction of apoptosis in the tail, are stimulated by an increase in thyroid hormone in the blood of a frog. _ The figure shows light micrograph of normal and apoptotic human leukemia cell illustrating chromatin condensation and nuclear fragmentation. _________________________________ _________________________________ Prologue: A vast […]
THE DEATH
THE DEATH Prologue: As a student of medicine, since I joined medical college in the year 1978, I have been a witness to death either in the form of dissecting a dead body or declaring someone dead. The dissecting cadaver (corpse) is a critical component of every medical education. Without the anatomical understanding of the human body that is afforded by dissection, much of modern medicine would simply not exist. I also remember a very difficult task of informing a crying mother that her only son died of poisoning. Hundreds of patients have died before me in my experience as a doctor. Many times my junior doctors have expressed apprehension of declaring someone dead because they were afraid that patient may still be alive and I used to teach them signs of death like unconsciousness, no response to any stimulus, no breathing, no pulse and no heart beat on […]
