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I'd like to know more about the way oxygen/nitrogen is transferred from the circulatory system to the cells in need.
Is it correct to assume for instance that because the O2 partial pressure in hemoglobin is greater than within a muscle cell (for instance), the O2 is transferred ?
If you have links to external resources as well that would be of great help !
Well to start with, forget Boyle's Law. This only relates pressure and volume of a gas.
The key word you need to run searches for your topic is "diffusion".
If you Google just
"We have not succeeded in answering all of your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things."
There are a number of factors at work in oxygen transport, and nitrogen shares few of them. Oxygen is carried on hemoglobin; for all intents and purposes, the small amount of dissolved oxygen in plasma can be disregarded, although the oxygen on the hemoglobin has to go into solution briefly to diffuse into cells. Hemoglobin's affinity for oxygen is affected by the pH, and also by the presence of byproducts of metabolism. In the lungs, pH is higher and 2,3DPG (the metabolic byproduct) is low, so hemoglobin has a high affinity for oxygen. In the tissues, the pH is lower due to the release of CO2 from metabolism, and 2,3DPG is higher. This favors the unloading of oxygen from the hemoglobin molecule, and that oxygen is then free to diffuse through cell membranes into the low oxygen environment within the cell.
On the other hand, nitrogen does not have a carrier molecule, and its diffusion is not affected by CO2 or metabolic byproducts.
There is a nice Wikipedia article on the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve, if you can turn a blind eye to the British spellings
Thank for these answers guys, they were really helpful, I thought it would be a complex subject, but this is even more than that, though very interesting !
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Questions about Boyle's law physiological effects
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