ZOOL 409: HISTOLOGY

Slide 17

Blood smear, mammalian embryo.  Giemsa stain. 

This specimen represents a tissue smear, rather than a section.  A drop of blood is placed on the slide and simply smeared across the surface.  Ideally this technique creates a single layer of evenly-spaced cells.  In practice, different locations in the smear have different quality.  You should look for a place where the cells are neither packed together nor clumped but are more-or-less evenly spaced.

More on blood smears.

This particular blood sample was taken from a mammalian embryo.  There are more nucleated blood cells than in mature blood, and the white blood cells are more various in appearance.

Additional blood smear specimens:

• slide 14, normal human blood
• slide 15, human blood, with leukemia (too many white blood cells)
• slide 16, human, sickle cell trait
• slide 18, fish blood (with nucleated red blood cells
• slide 19, bone marrow (where blood cells are formed)

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SIUC / College of Science / Zoology / David King / ZOOL 409