What is it?
Is it a small brain? Intestines? Poo?
No it’s a glomerulus from a mouse. A glomerulus is a little ball of very fine microscopic blood vessels. Each healthy human kidney has just over a million of these glomeruli.
A healthy glomerulus filters blood. The product is filtrated fluid that passes out goes through a long passage (the tubule) where water and essential chemicals are taken back from the fluid into the body as required at the time.
The end result is urine. The urine we pee is therefore the sum of the individual urine of about 2.5 million nephrons. A nephron is a glomerulus and its following tubule.
If you want to learn more about the glomerulus, check the wikipedia entry.
The above beautiful picture is from a mouse imaged by Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) super-resolution microscopy. It comes from a recent research article “Drug Testing for Residual Progression of Diabetic Kidney Disease in Mice Beyond Therapy with Metformin, Ramipril, and Empagliflozin” by Motrapu et al. Picture is the great work of Maria Lucia Angelotti and Giulia Antonelli.
Renal Association of Mauritius 