TRANSPORT OF MATERIALS IN PLANTS ‘The more advanced system of transport involves he movement of fluid outside the living cells but inside the organism. In plants, this fluid is sap. This is analogous to the blood. Such fluids are necessarily contained in and move through Lhe open spaces within the organism. The spaces develop as various tubular structures or vessels, in which Lhere is a definite and directional flow of fluid. The Fibrovascular Bundles The ducts of the vascular plants are of two types: xylem and phloem, which occur in bundles in roots, stem and leaves. Flow in the xylem is mainly upward from roots to stem and leaves, whereas products from leaves and other organs can move in both direction and commonly move downward through the phloem. An enormous amount of water enters the roots of plants, moves through the xylem vessels, and eventually leaves the plant by evaporation or transpiration. Most of the liquid in plants move in one direction only from soil to the roots, up Lhrough the vessels, and out into the air through the leaves and other surfaces. Solutions also frequently move in the op- posite direction (in the phloem), but generally with less regularity. ‘There is no directed circular movement of liquids, and to this extent. * plants do not have circulatory systems. ince plants do not possess a pumping organ, the plant.sap material are kept moving by a number of mechanical forces which act singly or as components. These are capillarity, adhesion, cohe- sion, absorption, osmotic pressure and pull of transpiration. These generally follow the physical laws of movement of matter and are collectively called passive transport.‘The active transport which is the movement of plant sap through the plant parts as regulated by enzymes, has been observed in laboratories. This explains movements which seem to defy the laws of physics. This “living” aspect of absorption is observed in the uptake of soil minerals by the root hair. ‘The phloem translocates food as dictated by a substance gra- dient concentration. The movement is generally toward the lesser from a comparatively high gradient concentration. Transport of Materials in Animals ‘The Protozoans circulate their life giving substances by means of slow rotary cytoplasmic movement. This is called cyclosis. Other animals of more complex structures have evolved some form of cir- culatory mechanisms. Circulation in Lower Forms of Animals Karthworms have primitive circulatory vessels to which blood is pumped by its five pairs of “heart”. Actually these five pairs of heart are just overgrown blood vessels, Circulation in this system is partly vascular and partly lymphati Insects have primitive one-chambered heart. Blood which is colorless is pumped Uhrough a single blood vessel. Blood then gets out of this vessel and completes its circulation through the lym- phatic pathway. : Circulation in Higher Forms of Animals ‘The animal circulatory system always includes a sort ofa pump- ing device called the heart. The one way pumping action of the heart moves the blood in a regular fashion through the circuit. This circuit maybe enclosed in well defined vessels in which case the system is called the CLOSE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. Earthworms and all the vertebrates have this kind of circulatory system. In some animals like the mollusks and arthropods, the system has some sectionswhere definite vessels are absent and the blood flows throughout the sinuses. Sucha system is called the OPEN CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. Circulation in the Lower Vertebrates Lower vertebrates have @ more or less complete but complex type of circulation. They have a separate arterial and venous path- ways for heir blood circulation. Fishes have two-chambered heart. located at the anterior end of the trunk. This is connected to the two main blood vessels which run the length of the body of the fish. Fresh blood is brought to all parts of the body by means of the arteries while used blood is collected by the veins. ‘The frog has a three-chambered heart. It has two atria and a simple muscular ventricle with inner folds. In the ventricle, pure and impure blood may mix. Blood travels through the arterial system Lo carry pure blood throughout the body. Used blood is col lected by the venous system. Reptiles and birds have four-chambered heart although some lower reptiles have only three-chambered heart. Blood circulates through a closed circulatory system:Uircwation in uan Man, like all the other vertebrates has a closed circulatory system which consist basically of the heart and numerous arteries, capillaries and veins. Arteries usually carry purified blood from the heart for distribution to all parts of the body. Impure or unoxygen- ated blood is brought by the veins to the heart which in turn pumps it to the lungs for purification. Veins are interconnected to the arteries by the very fine, thin walled capillaries. It is across the thin walla of the capillaries that exchange of materials between the blood and the other tissues take place. j : wt / The walls of arteries have three distinct layers: an outer coat of connective Lissue, a middle coat of smooth muscle cells and an inner coat of endothelium and connective tissue. The Lough fibrous tissue in the outer coat makes the artery resistant to internal pressures while permitting it to expand and contract with each heart beat. The arterial walls are supplied with two sets of nerves: impulses carried by one set cause the smooth muscles to contract, those carried by the other set effect a relaxation. The largest artery, the aorta, is about 25 mm. in diameter near the heart. and has a wall about 3 mm. thick. ‘The walls of veins are thinner than those of arteries, but the same three coats are present, The outer coat has fewer elastic fibers, idle muscular layer is Lhinner than the corresponding arterial and most veins have no internal elastic membrane. Veins are supplied with valves along their length to prevent the back-flow of blood. Blood pressure. A regular cycle of pressure in the larger arteries include the systole, when the pressure reaches its high point and dia- stole, when it reaches its low point. Both the systolic and diastolic pressures are important diagnostic indicators to the physician. ‘These pressures are usually measured in the artery of Lhe upper arm. In normal young adult at rest, the systolic pressure thus ob- ed averages about 120 mm. of mercury: the diastolic pressures —__—averaves 40 mm, The values would not be the same for the lower _averages 80 mm. ‘The values would not be the same for the lower arm or lor any part of the body. The average pressure decreases con- tinuously as the blood moves farther away from the heart. Blood. Blood is a type of connective tissue with a liquid matrix: The extracellular liquid matrix of the blood is called plasma. Suspended in the plasma are the formed elements, which are of three major types in the vertebrates: (1) the red blood cells or erythro- cytes: (2) Lhe white blood cell or leukocytes: (3) the platelets, which are small dise-shaped bodies that probably arise as cell fragments Normally, the formed elements constitutes about 40-50% of the volume of whole blood, while the plasma constitute the other 50-60% The erythrocytes are-small, biconcave, disc-shaped cells that lack nuclei when mature. Normally, there are roughly five million of them per cubic mm. of blood: Though their number remains con- stant from day to day, there is continual destruction of some cells and formation of new ones in the red bone marrow and spleen. An average human erythrocyLes contains about 280 million molecules of hemoglobin (the red oxygen currying pigment). It is with the iron in hemoglobin that oxygen becomes associated during transport. Leukocytes are larger than the erythrocytes and have large, often irregularly shaped nuclei. They are also found wandering free in loose connective tissues and occasionally in other tissues. They are capable of ameboid motion and can escape from the blood and lymph vessels by squeezing through the vessel walls at the point of contact between the vessels. The leukocytes play a very important role in the body’s defenses against disease and infection. Some act * as phagocytes, engulfing and destroying bacteria and remnants of damaged tissue cells. In a severe infection, the leukocyte count in the blood and lymph increases enormously and vast numbers of them may invade the infection area. Other leukocytes, seem to give rise to specialized cells called plasma cells, which play a central role in immunologic reactions. Plasma cells respond to the presence of certain kinds of foreign substances called antigens, which are usual- ly proteins, by making anti-bodies. ‘The platelets are also called thrombocytes. They are more or less disc-shaped; much smaller than red blood cells and have no nuclei. They are essential in blood clotting. The blond plasma. The plasma serves not only as a vehicle for the blood corpuscles; but also it transports a wide variety of substances in solution. Plasma contains water, (90 percent by weight); inorganic salts (1%); major proteins, (7%); serum albumin,(4%); serum globulin, (2.1%) fibrinogen, (U.8%); and other substances (2%). These other substances include: absorbed foods as glucose, amino acids, glycerol, fatty acids, neutral fats, other li- quids, and vitamins; collected wastes as urea, uric acid and other compounds; hormones, enzymes, and antibodies; reepiratory gases as oxygen and carbon dioxide. The basic solvent of the plasma is water which ‘constitutes roughly 90% of it. A great variety of substances are dissolved in the water: the relative concentration of these vary with time and with the portion of the system. Some of these substances — e.g., food and metabolic wastes — enter and leave the blood stream in the different parts of the system; but others — such as proteins — remain in the plasma quite indefinitely. One of the proteins, fibrinogen, plays an essetitial role in the clotting of blood; and all the blood proteins probably help to iaintain the osmotic properties of the plasma. Owing to the presence of the antibodies, blood plasma is fre- quently able to neutralize specific poisons, such as the toxins pro- duced by infecting bacteria and other parasites. Blood circulation. Blood enters the right side of the heart and is pumped to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen and gives up carbon dioxide. It is then returned to the left side of the heart. This portion of the circulatory system is called the pulmonary circulation. In the pulmonary circuit, the arteries carry deoxygenated blood and veins carry oxygenated blood. From the left side of the heart, the blood is pumped into the aorta and its numerous branches, which it moved into capillaries of the cells and tissues, and then into the veins, and finally back in the anterior or posterior vena cava to the right side of the heart. This portion of the circulatory sytem is called systemic circulation. The arteries of the systemic circulation carry oxy- genated blood and the veins carry the unoxygenated blood, a rever- sal of their roles in the pulmonary circulation. ‘The head and brain are supplied with blood by the carotid arteries, and are drained by the jugular veins. In addition, the brain is served by a second pair — the vertebral arteries and veins — lying close to the spinal cord so that if one of the vessels is cut or occuled, the brain is still adequately supplied with blood. ‘One exception to the rule that all veins carry blood to the heart is the hepatic portal system, which collects blood from the spleen, ‘stomach, pancreas and in| s and conducts it to the liver. There ” . fethe hepatic vein. ‘This vein drains blood trom the liver to the interior vena cava. Because of this arrangement, all blood from the spleen, stomach, intestines and pancreas must pass through the liver before it reaches the heart. Thus, food absorbed in the intestines is carried directly to the liver for storage. The rate of blood flow. In this course through the body, blood does not flow at a constant speed. The flow is rapid in the arteries at about 500 mm. or 20 inckes per second; in the veins at about 150 mm. per second; and slower in the capillaries at less than 1 mm. per second. . ‘The circulatory system is constructed in such a way that one large artery, the aorta, branches into many, intermediate-sized arteries. These in turn branch into Lhousand of small arterioles, each of which gives rise to many capillaries. Although the individual branches of the aorta are smaller than the vessel itself, there are so many of them that the total of the cross-sectional area is greater, and the rate of flow correspondingly less. At the other end of the capillary network, the capillaries join to form small veins venules, which combine to form increasingly larger veins. As this occurs, the total cross-sectional area decreases and the rate of flow increases. ‘The heart is assisted in moving blood through the veins by the movements of the skeletal museles and the motion of the body in breathing. Most of the veins are surrounded by skeletal muscles, which, when they contract, cause thé veins to collapse. "As the muscles relax, the collapsed section again fills with blood, which must. come from the direction of the capillaries. If one stand upright. quietly for a time, tissue fluid tends to collect in the legs, and swell- * ing results. In walking, the contraction of the leg muscles force the blood along the veins, and the feet and ankles are less likely Lo swell. The Lymphatic System ‘Vertebrates have a special system of vessels that function in returning materials from the tissues to the blood. These vessels are called lymph vessels and together they constituie the lymphatic system, which includes lymph veins and lymph capillaries bul no arteries. The lymph capillaries which like the bluod capillaries are distributed throughout most of the body, are closed al. one end. ‘Tissue fluid called lymph is absorbed into the lymph capillaries and slowly flows through the capillaries into small lymph veins which —_———nniite_to_form larger and larger veins until finally two very larzetymph ducts empty into the veins of the blood circulatory system in the upper portion of the thorax near the heart. Lymphatic system is not connected to the arterial portion of the blood circulatory system, it is obvious that lymph is not moved by hydrostatic pressure developed by the heart. Its function is to pick up small globules of fat from the intestines and deliver them into the blood. Lymph also protects the body from invading micro- organisms and foreign bodies. At the junctions of lymph vessels are aggregations of cells, the lymph nodes, which produce one kind of white cell, the [ymphocytes, and filter out bacteria and other particulate matter so that they do not enter the blood vascular system. Lymph flows very sluggishly through the minute, tortous channels in the lymph nodes and in- vading bacteria are trapped and phagocytized by the cells of the lymph node. Some bacteria may get past the first node and be caught in the second or third In a massive infection, the bacteria may penetrate all the lymph nodes and invade the blood stream. The presence of these phagocytized bacteria causes the lymph nodes to become swollen and tender. The lymph nodes of the neck may become noticeably swollen in individuals with sore throats. The lymph nodes in the lungs of heavy smokers are filled with particles of smoke and become a dark grey or black. These particles may eventually interfere with their functions and reduce their resistance to infections.