YOU ARE LEARNING:
The Kidney and Urea
The Kidney and Urea
We will discover the function of kidneys and how it gets rid of urea, the main waste product in urine.
The kidneys have an important role, they keep our ions at the right level and reabsorb useful substances that may have been filtered out. State two other functions of the kidneys.
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Name the substance produced by the kidneys.
The kidneys are involved in water regulation. They control how much water is reabsorbed back into the blood, and how much is lost in urine. This is why sometimes you have dilute, watery urine and other times you have strong, dark urine.
The urinary system
The kidneys are part of the urinary system.
Which tube leads from the kidney to the bladder?
Which part of the urinary system stores the urine?
Which tube allows you to release the contents of the bladder into the toilet?
Name the vessel that supplies blood to the kidney.
Name the blood vessel that carries blood away from the kidney.
There are lots of long tubes inside kidneys, name one of the complete units.
The nephron inside the kidney has important functions to carry out. The liquid parts of the blood are forced at high pressure across the nephron membrane and into the nephron. Only smaller substances can make it across, so what do you think could be the name of this process?
Once ultrafiltration has occurred, the nephron allows useful substances back into the blood. What do you think this is called?
After ultrafiltration occurs at the nephron and certain substances have been reabsorbed, anything that enters the bladder is called urine. What are the three main components of healthy urine?
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Urea is produced from amino acids. Excess amino acids need to be removed from the body. There are a couple of steps to this process.
Firstly the amino acids are deaminated. This just means that parts of the molecules are removed. This creates a substance with a very pungent smell. Which one?
Ammonia is toxic, so it get's converted into a harmless substance. Which one?
The liver produces urea from amino acids. The urea travels from the liver to the kidneys in the bloodstream. There, the urea is filtered out of the blood and into the nephron, before it is carried to the bladder to be stored as urine, alongside water and ions or salts.