🦌🎅 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 🎅🦌
Had a syncytiotrophoblast nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say: “it forms the placental surface across which gases, nutrients & metabolites pass from the maternal circulation to enter the fetal circulation & vice versa”
i♡histo
This image shows many slices through the placental villi, fingerlike projections of the fetal-derived component of the human placenta. One of these villi looks like he’s been prohibited from participating in a variety of reindeer activities.
Rudolph’s core is composed of mesenchyme, an embryonic tissue that has the capacity to form tiny vessels (the tiny white holes) that are branches and tributaries of the umbilical arteries and vein that run in the umbilical cord and hook up with baby’s internal vascular plumbing.
The cell layer forming Rudolph’s skin (and his nose!) is called the syncytiotrophoblast layer. In the early placenta there are actually two layers (the outer syncytiotrophoblast and the inner cytotrophoblast). As the placenta matures the cytotrophoblasts thins and disappears leaving only the syncytiotrophoblast as the thin barrier between moms blood and those tiny fetal capillaries inside each villus.
But where is mom’s blood I hear you ask? Well, you can’t see it because it drained away once the placenta was removed and was sliced up. But… what you can see are the large ‘maternal blood lakes’ where her blood used to be (the large white spaces).
Now imagine all those fetal villi, and Rudolph, floating in those blood lakes and you can start to appreciate how efficient this arrangement is at allowing the exchange of gases and nutrients between mom and baby.