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Gas exchange is the physical process by which gases move passively by diffusion across a surface. For example, this surface might be the air/water interface of a water body, the surface of a gas bubble in a liquid, a gas-permeable membrane, or a biological membrane that forms the boundary between an organism and its extracellular environment.
Gas exchange in the lungs occurs in millions of small air sacs; in mammals and reptiles, these are called alveoli, and in birds, they are known as atria. These microscopic air sacs have a very rich blood supply, thus bringing the air into close contact with the blood. [2]
In mammals, physiological respiration involves respiratory cycles of inhaled and exhaled breaths. Inhalation (breathing in) is usually an active movement that brings air into the lungs where the process of gas exchange takes place between the air in the alveoli and the blood in the pulmonary capillaries.
Breathing gas – Gas used for human respiration; Carbon cycle – Natural processes of carbon exchange; Central sleep apnea – Sleep-related disorder in which the effort to breathe is diminished; Eupnea – Natural, comfortable form of breathing in mammals; Liquid breathing – Respiration of oxygen-rich liquid by a normally air-breathing ...
In mammals and most other tetrapods, two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart. Their function in the respiratory system is to extract oxygen from the atmosphere and transfer it into the bloodstream, and to release carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the atmosphere, in a process of gas exchange. Respiration is ...
A pulmonary alveolus (pl. alveoli; from Latin alveolus 'little cavity'), also called an air sac or air space, is one of millions of hollow, distensible cup-shaped cavities in the lungs where pulmonary gas exchange takes place. [1] Oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide at the blood–air barrier between the alveolar air and the pulmonary ...
The respiratory tract is the subdivision of the respiratory system involved with the process of conducting air to the alveoli for the purposes of gas exchange in mammals. [1] The respiratory tract is lined with respiratory epithelium as respiratory mucosa. [2]
The placenta can be defined as an organ formed by the sustained apposition or fusion of fetal membranes and parental tissue for physiological exchange. [1] This definition is modified from the original Mossman (1937) [ 2 ] definition, which constrained placentation in animals to only those instances where it occurred in the uterus.