All About Tissues!

For this lab, we learned and observed the different types of tissues in a microscope. One of my favorite tissues was the bone, which is a specialized connective tissue with a black center and a speckled gray pattern around it (shown in center). The dark center is the area that blood would flow through (where the vessel would go) and the rings around it represent the bone that surrounds it.

In the tissues, we can really see the theme of form fitting function taking place. Epithelial tissue for example, changes depending on where it is located in the body. If it is lining a gland, such as the thyroid, it can be seen in simple columnar form. However, if it on the skin, it is usually stratified, differing between squamous, cuboidal and columnar. It has a basement layer, called a basal lamina that latches it to the connective tissue underneath.  Nervous tissue on the other hand, is full of neurons and the supporting neurological cells. It can be seen as more "stringy", with clumps representing the center of the cell and dendrites pushing out of the top, sending electrical impulses. The pulses also travel down the axon to the other set of dendrites at the end, connecting each the neurons together. Even in the same tissue we can see differences. Skeletal muscle for example, has striations and is multi-nucleate. Smooth muscle on the other hand, has no striations and is spindle shaped. The third type, cardiac muscle, is branched with striations, but is uni-nucleate. It is through the different anatomy of the tissues and their subparts that we can see the theme of form fits function even more clearly.