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The Vertebrate Blood-Gas Barrier in Health and Disease pp 15–38Cite as

Morphological and Morphometric Properties of the Blood-Gas Barrier: Comparative Perspectives

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Abstract

The blood-gas barrier (BGB), the tissue partition between air and blood at the gas exchange level of the lung, is exceptional by its remarkable thinness and vast surface area. Its diffusing capacity of oxygen correlates directly with the surface area and inversely with the thickness. Structurally, the BGB comprises an epithelial cell, an interstitial space, and an endothelial cell. Along and across the evolutionary continuum, the thin, essentially three-ply laminated architecture of the BGB has been widely and greatly conserved in the lungs of animals that remarkably differ morphologically, phylogenetically, behaviourally, and ecologically. On the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life and with it preponderance of air breathing as means of acquiring oxygen (O2), the “layered” design appears to have been the only practical structural solution to supporting efficient movement of O2 from air to blood by means of simple passive diffusion. The thickness of the BGB has been considerably optimized. The range of the differences in the thickness of the BGB in the lungs of animals, which differ considerably in body mass, is very narrow, and the allometric scaling factors (slopes) of the plots of the barrier thickness against body mass are very small.

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Abbreviations

BGB:

Blood-gas barrier

CL:

Capillary loading

DLO2 :

Total morphometric diffusing capacity of the lung

DtO2 :

Morphometric diffusing capacity of the tissue barrier (BGB) of the lung

FM:

Surface (free) macrophage

OLB:

Osmiophilic lamellated body

PCBV:

Pulmonary capillary blood volume

RSA:

Respiratory surface area

St:

Surface area of the blood-gas barrier

PCBV:

Pulmonary capillary blood volume

τht :

Harmonic mean thickness of the blood-gas barrier

τht min :

Minimum harmonic mean thickness of the blood-gas barrier

τt :

Arithmetic mean thickness of the blood-gas barrier

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Acknowledgments

Financial support by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa in the preparation of this chapter is gratefully appreciated. The views expressed here are, however, those of the author and not those of the NRF.

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  1. Department of Zoology, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park 2006, Post Box 524, Johannesburg, South Africa

    John N. Maina

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  1. Department of Veterinary Anatomy and Physiology, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

    Andrew N. Makanya

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Maina, J. (2015). Morphological and Morphometric Properties of the Blood-Gas Barrier: Comparative Perspectives. In: Makanya, A. (eds) The Vertebrate Blood-Gas Barrier in Health and Disease. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18392-3_2

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