End of Respiration, Beginning of Reproduction

Today we will finish up respiration and start reproduction. Monday will cover the physiological
aspects of heart function, through blood pressure, immunology, endocrinology, respiration,
reproduction, and renal. Last class we were looking at the respiratory system and focusing on
the anatomy of it; one last anatomical concern, before we go on and talk about the physiology of
how respiration works, is a very important part of the respiratory system because without it, it
would not work. If this is a lung, the essential mechanical event that allows breathing is that that
lung has to change physical dimensions, it has to get bigger, then smaller, bigger, then smaller.
How are we going to make it get bigger? It gets smaller by itself, it is called compliant; the lung
has a lot of elastic tissue in it, if you stretch it, it will go back to its smallest possible dimension
all by itself, the question is how am I going to make it bigger. It has no internal structures that
will allow that to happen, but what there is is a specialized membrane that surrounds the lung
called the plural sac. The plural membrane surrounds the lung; remember when we talked about
the heart we said that the heart is surrounded by pericardial membrane, the layer attached to the
heart, the visceral layer, the same thing with the plural sac, there is a visceral layer, the visceral
plura, and then, just like the sac surrounding the heart, there is a parietal layer and in between is
fluid, so the two membranes are held together by cohesive force, almost like a suction, negative
pressure. If I were to move the parietal membrane, the visceral membrane is going to move with
it, so the two membranes function together, now all we have to do is attach the parietal
membrane to something else that can move, and we move that. What we attach it to is first, on
the bottom, the diaphragm. When you breathe, your diaphragm, which has a hump shape,
flattens out, and the dome part of it moves down, therefore pulls the bottom of the lung down
increasing the top to bottom dimension. In addition to being attached to the diaphragm, the
parietal membrane is also attached to the inside of your chest wall, so when you move your rib
cage, and your ribs when you inhale move up and out, the parietal membrane also moves up and
out, increasing the medial to lateral dimension of the lung. You have these muscles that lie in
between your ribs, and they lift the bottom rib up and out, it is going to pull the parietal
membrane with it, making the lung bigger, from middle to the outside, medial to lateral. Every
time you breath in, you are pulling the parietal membrane out and up, and then the diaphragm is
pulling it down, so the lungs get bigger. When you relax those muscles, everything goes back to
their normal position, and the lungs get smaller. So, breathing requires changing the dimensions
of the lung. To change the dimensions of the lung you move the membranes that are attached to
the surface of the lung, and you do that by moving certain parts of the muscular-skeletal system.
Does anyone know what a neumothorax is? That is the medical term for a collapsed lung. What
happens is the plural membrane gets damaged. Sometimes it happens in a car accident or a fall,
if you break a rib, because the edge of the rib might cut the plural membrane and all the fluid
leaks out, and now the outside of the membrane is still attached to the chest wall and to the
diaphragm, and the only thing that is keeping the inside of the membrane attached to the outside
of the membrane is that cohesion of the fluid. If the fluid leaks out, the lung goes to its lowest
possible dimension and pulls away. What they do is put a chest tube in, pressurize it with air,
inflating the lung, and holding the parietal membrane close to the visceral membrane until the
injury heals. The actual fluid is being secreted by the membrane itself, and the membrane is
connective tissue so it will heal itself, the fluid will be created again. Almost every organ is
surrounded by the same kind of membrane.

Let us now talk about the actual mechanics of breathing. How do you breathe? A couple things
we need to know first: because air is going to move as a result of differences in pressure, there
are three different pressures that we are concerned with, 1) the pressure in the atmosphere, 2) the
pressure inside of the lung itself, the alveolar pressure, the intrapulmonary pressure, 3) and the
pressure that holds those two membranes together, intraplural pressure. At all times, the pressure
holding the two membranes together has to be more negative than any other pressure. You can
think of it has the two membranes being held together by a negative pressure; that pressure has to
be more negative than whatever force you apply on it by the lung changing its pressure.
Let us talk about pulmonary ventilation. There are two phases to it, inspiration and expiration.
Inspiration is the process of bringing air into our lungs. How do we inspire? We inspire by
changing the dimensions of our lungs, and there are two types of inspiration; what you are doing
right now is called quiet inspiration, which involves moving a title volume. It primarily involves
activating your diaphragm, diaphragm flattens out, the lung gets taller, its superior and inferior
dimensions increase, and in addition, you are activating the muscles that are in between your
ribs. If these are two neighboring ribs, the space in between a rib is called the costal space, you
have muscles that lie within that space, called the intercostal muscles. Muscles generally have
two ends, and those ends can usually attach to two different bone, one end of the muscle is fixed
in place, the other end of the muscle moves a bone. The part of the muscle that is on the bone
that is fixed is its origin, the part of the muscle that is on the moveable bone is its insertion. The
external intercostal muscle has its origin on the rib above and the insertion on the rib below, so
when you activate it it pulls the rib below up, and you cannot really pull the rib straight up, so it
moves up and out, increasing the medial-lateral dimensions of the lung. The external intercostals
muscles are activated during quiet inhalation, and that is what you are doing right now, that is
what you are probably doing 95% of the time or more. Just a total aside: what are you eating if
you eat intercostal muscles, what would they serve you? Ribs. They are usually smoked and
have a nice dry rub on them and nice slathering sauce. If youve ever had ribs, you are going to
be eating intercostal muscles. Since they are active all the time, they are kind of tough, so that is
why you marinate them and slow roast them for 6-8 hours.
The next thing we want to worry about: what happens if we want to take a deeper breath? We
want a forced inhalation. You can inflate your lungs a lot more than you have been, so how am I
going to get that happen? I have other muscles that can also make the rib cage bigger. To make
the rib cage bigger, you have to lift the upper part of the rib cage up. So there are other muscles
attached to the upper part of the rib cage that are not normally used to move the rib. In addition
your vertebral column has a number of curvatures in it, and your lungs are sitting in here, so
what you can do is pull that part of the vertebral column posteriorly, increasing the anterior to
posterior dimension of the lung. Has anyone ran track and at the end of the difficult race? What
you want to do is just hunch over, increasing the internal dimensions of the rib cage, making
your lungs bigger, and it is the most appropriate thing to do, though it looks pathetic. If you
want to get your ribs bigger, you flatten the curvature of your spine, you lift the upper part of
your rib cage up, and that is forced inhalation.
The other process, expiring, is simply allowing the lung to go back to its normal position. To
quietly expire, you simply relax the muscles that you activate during quiet inhalation, your
diaphragm, your intercostals, the diaphragm goes back to its normal position and the ribs go back

to their normal position. Now the lung is smaller than it just was. When you inhale, you
increase the lung dimension and the volume goes up, now I decrease the lung dimension and the
volume goes down, what happens to the pressure of the air that was in the lung as you allowed
the diaphragm and rib cage to go back to its normal position? The pressure goes up, so the air
goes out. Exhaling is simply allowing the thorax to go back to its normal position, allowing the
diaphragm to back to its normal position, the air gets pressurized and follows the pressure
gradient back out to the atmosphere. But you can also force expiration, forcing out more air. To
do that, you have to make the rib cage smaller, and besides the external intercostals that lift up
and out, you have internal intercostals that pull down and in. In addition to activating the
intercostals, you can also activate the abdominal muscles which pressurizes the fluid within your
paratenial space, pushing your diaphragm up to the bottom of the lung. You can also take
muscles like your latissimus dorsi which normally pulls your sternum and humerus posteriorly,
you can use it pull your sternum down, compressing and squishing your rib cage. There are a lot
of additional accessory muscles that you can use to make your rib cage smaller. What muscle are
you eating when you eat abdominal muscles? Bacon. Look at the cross second of bacon, you
can see the three different bundles of muscle separated by adipose.
The amount of air you are breathing moment to moment is called the tidal volume, but you can
also inhale additional air, this is the inspitory reserve, and you can also exhale more air, this is
exertory reserve, and there is always air left in your lungs because otherwise they would deflate,
and this is the residual volume. So there are four volumes: there is inspitory reserve volume,
tidal volume, exertory reserve volume, and residual volume. For a typical individual, there are
about 7 liters of air in your lungs. Typically you have 2200 mL at the end of the tidal volume.
Tidal volume is about 500 mL, and there is a little less than 2000 mL left in the lung at all times
to stop it from deflating. The total lung capacity is the sum of all of these volumes. The
exchangeable air includes the tidal volume, inspitory and expitory reserve, this is called the vital
capacity. The amount of air that you can inspire is tidal volume plus inspitory reserve, this is
inspitory capacity, and then the amount of air that is held in the lung at the end of a tidal volume
is called the functional-residual capacity. The total lung capacity is everything, the vital capacity
is all exchangeable air, the inspitory capacity is the amount of air you can inspire, and the
functional-residual capacity is what is left in the lungs after the tidal volume is exhaled.
The next thing that we want to talk about is the transport of gases in the body. Here is our
atmospheric air, here is your lung, this is the alveolar air, here are some cells of your body down
here. I am not going to throw the heart circuit in here, I am just going to show a loop. We have
blood and we have gases carried in our blood, we have air that has a mixture of gases, and the
proportion of a gas in a mixture is called its partial pressure. Gases will move from one location
to another based on a partial pressure gradient. If for example the pressure of oxygen is greater
in the lung than in the blood, what is it going to do? It is going to move out of the lung, into the
blood. If the partial pressure of oxygen is greater in the blood than in the tissues of the body,
oxygen is going to move out of the blood and into the tissue. In atmospheric air, the partial
pressure of oxygen is very high, it is about 140 mmHg. The partial pressure of carbon dioxide
0.03 mmHg. We breathe that air in and mix it with the air we have in our lungs and then we
exhale that air back into the atmosphere and we return air that has less oxygen and more carbon
dioxide than it did originally. Now the pressure of the gases in your lungs, oxygen is about 104,
carbon dioxide is 40. When the blood leaves the lungs it is going to have partial pressures that

are like partial pressures in the lung, oxygen at 104 and carbon dioxide at 40. When we get to
the tissues of the body, oxygen levels are really low, about 20, and partial pressure of carbon
dioxide are high, about 45. So now this lung, with this composition of gases, now comes in
contact with the fluids that are surrounding these cells. So what is carbon dioxide going to do?
It has a partial gradient that favors its movement out of the tissues and into the lung. What is
oxygen going to do? It has a partial pressure gradient that favors the movement out of the blood
and into the tissues. Our oxygen is going to move out of the blood and our carbon dioxide is
going to move in, then our blood leaves with carbon dioxide being about 45, oxygen levels being
about 40, then the blood comes back and interacts with the air in your lungs, and then oxygen
moves back in, carbon dioxide moves, and we do this over and over again until we are dead.
As far as the actual movement of gases, we carry oxygen attached to a specialized protein called
hemoglobin, because it is hardly soluble. Each hemoglobin molecule can carry four oxygens and
the oxygens are attached not to any aminoacids of the protein but to internal structures within the
molecules called henes, iron based henes.
You can carry carbon dioxide a couple different ways. One, it can go into solution, 25% or so of
your carbon dioxide is actually dissolved in your blood. Sometimes some fraction of your
carbon dioxide is actually attached to your hemoglobin, but not to the henes. There is aminoacid
residue on the hemoglobin molecule that actually attach a carbon dioxide molecule to it. the rest
of it is carried in a form called bicarbonate. Carboxylic acid is formed out of carbon dioxide, and
then it dissociates to form bicarbonate, the important thing about this is that besides forming the
bicarbonate is that it produces hydrogen ion, and we will talk about why that is important later.
carbon dioxide is carried either dissolved, attached to the hemoglobin, or bicarbonate form.
The last thing we need to talk about as far as respiration is concerned is, why do you breathe? It
is a common misconception that we breathe because we need to replenish our oxygen in our
blood. That is not true. We have plenty of oxygen all the time. We do not unload all of our
oxygen every time it gets to our tissues. If the oxygen leaving the lungs goes through a full
circuit through the body, about 90% of the oxygen will still be left in the blood. We do not
breathe we need to get more oxygen, because of our carbon dioxide levels. Our brain structures
that regulate breathing respond to carbon dioxide levels, by responding to pH, and really what
they respond to is the hydrogen ion itself. There are specialized neurons within the medulla,
which is the most ancient part of the brain, and there is a respiratory center in the medulla called
the DRG, which stands for dorsal respiratory group. The DRG creates an electrical signal called
an action potential and then it sends a signal via a nerve called the slankle nerve to your
diaphragm and causes your diaphragm to contract when hydrogen levels increase. It takes about
2 seconds to inhale and 3 seconds to exhale, so 5 seconds per breath, and 5 into 60 is 12 breaths
per minute. Every five seconds or so, the DRG sends a signal to the diaphragm. If you decide to
hold your breath, you can use your upper cortical areas to control your medulla, but only for so
long, because as hydrogen ion levels get higher, they will cause the nerves to depolarize, reach
threshold, and create this electrical signal.
The next topic is reproduction. One way to control members of society is to keep them
sufficiently stupid, so then they have to differ to authorities for decision making processes.

First we have to establish biological sex, then we need to have the appropriate reproductive
anatomies, then we need to produce gametes, then we need to unite those gametes (fertilization)
and then we need the result of fertilization to develop. Biological sex in most species produces
exclusively females. If you went to a beehive, every single organism in that collection will be
females. The only time a male is made is for the purposes of fertilizing the queen. When that is
necessary, the larval stages of the bee are provided particular male defining factors to induce the
formation of a male of the species. The only way to get a male is to have these specific unique
factors present during development. The same thing with humans; every single embryo would
be a female if male factors were not provided. There are four different biological sexes. There is
chromosomal sex, genato sex, there is phenotypic sex, and there is secondary sexual
characteristics. These are established at different points in our lives. We are familiar with the
differences that occurred in our bodies associated with puberty, those are our secondary sexual
characteristics, the physical form that the male and female possess as adults are their secondary
sexual characteristics. Reproductively, the female can only produce gametes that have X
chromosomes, she can only specify the formation of another female. The male can produce a
gamete with either an X or a Y chromosome. The chromosomal sex of an individual is
established at the time of fertilization and depends on the chromosomal makeup of the fertilizing
sperm. The absence of a Y makes you a female, and the presence of a Y makes you male. Then
all human embryos from that point on are exactly the same; they have the same internal
structures, the same external structures. The only way you are going to deviate from that pattern
of development is if specific male defining factors are present. The next biological sex that
needs to be established is genato sex. Prior to the establishment of genato sex, all embryos have
what are called genato ridges. The genato ridge can form either testes or ovaries. The ovary will
form by default; to become the male gonad, there is a particular gene sequence expressed on the
Y chromosome called TDF, testicular defining factor, which causes the genado ridge to become
testes, and that happens at about 8 weeks after fertilization. Most of us probably know that the X
chromosome has about 2500 genes and the Y chromosome has less than 20 genes on it and all of
these genes code for male traits. Once you have a genado sex, the next thing you need to do is
connect your gonad to the outside world; the next thing you need to develop is what is called an
internal phenotype. For example, the female ovary is found within the abdomen, to function
reproductively, the male reproductive cells must reach the female reproductive cells, so we need
to connect that gonad to the outside world, and the structures that connect the ovary to the
outside world is the female internal phenotype. At this point, the embryo has two sets of internal
structures, they have mularian ducts and wolfian ducts. The mularian ducts become the female
internal phenotype. The wolfian ducts become the male internal phenotype. To be a female, if
there is male defining factors, the mularian ducts become three things, and these things allow the
gonad to be connected to the outside world: fallopian tubes, uterus, and part of the uterus which
connects to the vagina called the cervix, this region is called the proximal vagina. The distal
vagina, the part that passes through the pelvic floor is actually part of the outer body wall. The
part that connects the vagina to the uterus is derived from the mularian ducts. The male internal
phenotype is derived from the wolfian ducts; during this developmental stage of embryological
life, the testes are still inside the abdominal cavity. Later on, the testes with descend out of the
abdominal cavity through an opening in the abdominal wall called the inglunal canal and then
descend down into the scrotum, but at this point there is no external phenotype, this is
completely internal. We need to connect the testes to the outside world, so the male system that
connects the testes to the outside world joins up with the urinary system, so the actual connection

to the outside world is via a part of the urinary system, so the urethra connects the bladder to the
outside world. For females, the urethra terminates on the bodys surface; for the male, the
urethra passes through the male copulatory organ. So to connect the gonad to the outside world,
we do not really connect it to the outside world, we connect it to the urinary system. The teste is
connected to the urethra by the male internal phenotype; its components include the epididemus,
which is where sperm are stored, the vasdepheron, which is the tube that connects the
epididemus to the seminal vesicle, and then when those two structures come together they form
what is referred to as the ejaculatory duct, and that passes through another gland called the
prostate. The male internal phenotype is the epididemus, the vesdepheron, and the ejaculatory
duct. Now we have connected the male gonad to a structure that is connected to the outside
world, which is the urethra. The wolfian ducts, if the appropriate male defining factors are
present, will become the epididemus, the vastepheron, and the ejaculatory duct. Now how do we
get this to happen? To become a male, you need two things to happen, you have to stop the
female system from developing and you have to make the male system develop. In a normal
male, TDF causes the testes to form, and the testes produce two factors, MIH, which stands for
mularian inhibiting hormone, which blocks the mularian ducts from developing, and testosterone
causes the wolfian ducts to develop. If both of those factors are present, then the internal
phenotype becomes male. If you had MIH but not testosterone, you would have no internal
phenotype. If you had testosterone but not MIH, you would have both.
Now that we have an internal phenotype, we have to develop the external phenotype. During
embryological life, the external structures on all embryos are exactly the same. If you are a
male, you do not acquire male characteristics until maybe the eighth or ninth week after
development has started. All embryos have what is called a genital tubrical, a urethral groove, a
urethral fold, and a labial-scrotal swelling. All embryos start with the same physical appearance
comprised of these four structures. Depending on whether male defining factors are present or
absent, these structures with either become female external genitals or male external genitals. If
there are no male defining factors, the genital tubrical becomes the clitoris, the urethral groove
becomes the vesivule, the urethral fold becomes the labia minora, and the labial-scrotal swellings
become the labia majora. If the male defining factors are present, the genital tubrical becomes
the glonds which is the most distal end of the penis, the urethral groove becomes what is called
the spongy urethra, the urinary urethra, the tube that connects the bladder to the surface of the
body, needs to be extended all through the penis, and so the urethral fold folds around the
urethral groove and then the spongy urethra extends up to that space inside of the penis and
becomes what is called the spongy urethra. The urethra fold becomes the base of the penis, and
the labial scrotal swellings become the scrotum. From a clinical standpoint, if you were to
examine the male external genitals, you will notice there is a fusion line that runs right up the
midline, from the base of the scrotum all the way up to the base of the penis, because all of the
female structures come together and fuse on the midline, so what would be the labia minora
fuses along the midline and becomes the scrotum, and the testes later on will descend down out
through the inglunal canal inside this flab of skin. In order to get a male external phenotype, you
need a male defining factor, and that is testosteronethe same factor that causes the production
of the male internal phenotype also produces the male external phenotype. Let us say we have a
normal male that produces TDF, gets testes, produces MIH, produces testosterone; the internal
phenotype is male, the external phenotype is male. What if a male produced TDF, got testes,
produced MIH, but did not produce testosterone? The internal phenotype would be nothing, the

external phenotype would be female. What if the male produced TDF, got testes, produced
testosterone, but did not produce MIH? The internal phenotype would be both, the external
phenotype would be male. What if the male had TDF, got testes but produced neither MIH nor
testosterone? The internal phenotype would be female, and the external phenotype would be
female. What if we had a female, of course she is never going to make TDF because she does
not have a Y chromosome, so therefore she is always going to have ovaries, never going to
produce MIH, but what if the pregnant female had a tumor in her adrenal cortex that produced
testosterone, and this developing embryo was exposed to the testosterone from the mom? The
internal phenotype would be both, because she has no MIH but has testosterone, and the external
phenotype would be male.