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Protein found to regulate red blood cell size and number. |
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EurekAlert: "This is one of the rare cases where we can explain a normal human-to-human variation," says Lodish, who is also a professor of biology and bioengineering at MIT. "In a sense, it's a window on human evolution. Why this should have happened, we have no idea, but it does." Lodish likens cyclin D3's role in RBCs to that of a clock. In some people, the clock triggers RBC progenitors to mature after four rounds of cell division, resulting in fewer but larger RBCs. In others it goes off after five cell division cycles, which leads to production of a greater number of smaller RBCs. In both cases, the blood usually has the same ability to carry oxygen to distant tissues.
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