Anatomy and Physiology Terms

A cell line made from human prostate cancer cells that is used in the laboratory to study the way prostate cancer cells grow.

Glands make things the body needs, and ducts are the plumbing that delivers them without spilling into surrounding tissue.

Short as it is, this stretch is where most chemical digestion happens and where several other organs empty their secretions.

The sweat gland that covers nearly the whole body and does the actual work of cooling it.

Weeks counted from fertilization and weeks counted from a last period differ by two, which is why embryo timelines often seem to disagree.

Signals released straight into the bloodstream reach every tissue, so a gland the size of a pea can change what the whole body does.

Ductless glands drop their messengers straight into the blood, so a signal made in one place acts on organs far away.

The endometrium is the inner lining of the uterus that thickens and sheds each menstrual cycle and supports a pregnancy if one occurs.

The single layer of flat cells lining every vessel, acting as a non-stick surface and as a control panel for blood flow.

A cell that forms the lining of the fluid-filled spaces in the brain and spinal cord.

A layer with no blood supply of its own, rebuilt continuously from below and shed from above roughly once a month.

Stripped of a nucleus and packed with hemoglobin, this cell trades any ability to repair itself for maximum oxygen carrying capacity.

The adjective attached to anything concerning the swallowing tube, from reflux and strictures to cancers and speech after surgery.

A valve at each end keeps traffic moving one way, and it is failure of the lower one that causes most trouble.

The part of the common hepatic bile duct (tube that collects bile from the liver) that is outside the liver.

Color carries most of the information, since bile pigment explains brown, its absence explains pale, and digested blood explains black.

A moving state rather than a fixed one, since age, illness, surgery and treatment all shift it in either direction.

The cell that builds the body's structural framework, and the same cell that closes a wound by making a scar.

The air space behind the eyebrows that nobody is born with, and the one whose shape is distinctive enough to identify a person.

It is a reservoir rather than a producer, which is why the body manages without it once it has been removed.