• Question: How are red blood cells formed? Or what are they made of? - Aidan

    Asked by aidansomanah to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Hi Aidan

      Red blood cells form in the bone marrow from specialised cells which themselves come from special blood stem cells called haematopoietic stem cells. There are about 7 steps to make a red blood cell, with each step the cells become more and more specialised until after about 7 days they finally leave the bone marrow as mature red blood cells. They are made of the same things as other cells with two major differences, they have no nucleus so do not contain chromosomes like all other cells and they have haemoglobin which is used to transport oxygen around the body.

      I hope that helps!

    • Photo: Tomasz Kostrzewski

      Tomasz Kostrzewski answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi Aidansomanah, red blood cells are made in the bone marrow from stem cells. The stem cells has to go through a number of stages before it becomes a red blood cell and this process takes about 7 days. The average adult human has 20-30 trillion red blood cells at any given time and produces 46 billion daily.

    • Photo: Anzy Miller

      Anzy Miller answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Just a little thing to add – it takes the human body 1 SECOND to make 2 MILLION RED BLOOD CELLS!

      And if you lined up all the red blood cells from your body around the world they would go nearly 4 times round the equator!

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