Week 3: Tissue structure and function

Introduction

Welcome to Week 3 of the course.

This week you will look at a selection of tissues that have different functions. You will continue your work with the virtual microscope tool to explore how the structure and function of these tissues are related.

As David Male explains, the relationship between tissue function and structure is a key consideration for histologists and other medical professionals, because understanding this association can support the diagnosis of disease.

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Transcript

DAVID MALE

In the second part of the course, we introduced you to a number of different human tissues, including the skin, the gut, blood vessels, pancreas, and so on. In this part, we're going to introduce you to a further series of tissues, but, in particular, we are going to relate the structure of the tissues to their function. We've chosen a number of functions, including excretion, illustrated by the kidney; communication, illustrated by the nervous system; strength, illustrated by bone and cartilage.

The relationship of the structure of a tissue to its function is very important for understanding a diagnosis of disease. For example, if heart muscle becomes expanded, it may be because the person has been training or it may be because their heart is overloaded and there is some specific pathology taking place. Understanding these relationships is really important for understanding the basis of disease. And that is where we will be going on the next part of the course.

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