Function
Each of the vasa recta has a hairpin turn in the medulla and carries blood at a very slow rate, two factors crucial in the maintenance of countercurrent exchange that prevent washout of the concentration gradients established in the renal medulla.
The maintenance of this concentration gradient is one of the components responsible for the kidney's ability to produce concentrated urine.
On the descending portion of the vasa recta, NaCl and urea are reabsorbed into the blood, while water is secreted. On the ascending portion of the vasa recta, NaCl and urea are secreted into the interstitium, while water is reabsorbed.
Read more about this topic: Vasa Recta
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The function of comedy is to dispel ... unconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysis right on to it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (18561950)
“The mothers and fathers attitudes toward the child correspond to the childs own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (19001980)
“... the function of art is to do more than tell it like it isits to imagine what is possible.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)