Description
After centrifugation, one can distinguish a layer of clear fluid (the plasma), a layer of red fluid containing most of the red blood cells, and a thin layer in between. Making up less than 1% of the total volume of the blood sample, the buffy coat (so-called because it is usually buff in hue), contains most of the white blood cells and platelets. The buffy coat is used, for example, to extract DNA from the blood of mammals (since mammalian red blood cells are anucleate and do not contain DNA).
The buffy coat is usually whitish in color, but is sometimes green if the blood sample contains large amounts of neutrophils (which are high in green myeloperoxidase). The layer next to buffy coat contains granulocytes and red blood cells.
Read more about this topic: Buffy Coat
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)