Objective 63 & 66: Urinary system

Objective 63: Describe the structure and function of renal corpuscles and renal tubules
Objective 66: Identify the three basic tasks performed by the nephrons and collecting ducts, and indicate where each task occurs


Anything that has to do with the nephrons is definately not my department at all. When you take an overview of the whole structure, its way more than any normal person can swallow. I never knew that such a small section of our body, microscopic small since there are about one million nephrons per kidney, could play such an important factor in our body and urine secretion. It's common sense that our bodies have to secrete waste, but I never sat and wondered how our body actually accomplished this until now. The textbooks and lectures gave a great deal of information on these topics that were not only informative, but very confusing. So I set out to find something that would better summarize this tangled mess of nephrons that our body has. I found this video on Youtube that was absolutely amazing in describing not only the structure and functions of the renal corpuscles and renal tubules, but it also gave great information about the functions of the nephrons and collecting ducts. Anything diagram that has animation showing me how the process works is helpful for me.

So basically, the nephrons functions are filtration, secretion, and reabsorption. The collecting ducts are responsible for collecting all materials that has not returned to the blood through tubular membranes. This material will exit the body as urine. Filtration occurs in the renal corpuscle. The glomerulus filters protein and cells from the blood, and then all other blood components go into the Bowman's capsule. Secretion and reabsorbtion occurs in the U-shaped tubule. The semipermeable membranes surrounding the tubule allow certain particles to reabsorbed back into the blood or from the blood into the tubule.