What Cell Would You Be?

In clin path, when we were learning about eosinophils, our professor mentioned that the pathologists had once had a discussion about what cell you would be, or what cell describes your personality. (Because pathologists are the biggest nerds out of all of us)

She brought it up because she really loves horse eosinophils. They look sort of like raspberries.

There are a lot of cells I like, and some that I'm more partial to than others. My friend and I once talked about this in parasites--there were certain ones that spoke to us so we never got them wrong if they came up on a test. One of mine was Ancylostoma caninum, a hookworm in dogs.

Another was Toxocara canis because it is the same sort of worm as Dune sandworms.

But back to the topic, there are some nice cells to choose from. I quite like neutrophils because they stand out so clean and nicely on a blood smear.

They can be a little ragged, however. My favourite is one that is much more pristine--very smooth and fine: the spherocyte. Even the name has a nice roundness!

These are cells formed by partial phagocytosis--a macrophage takes a chomp out of a red blood cell, so the RBC stretches its membrane over the defect and gets smaller and more compact. They're present in immune-mediated haemolytic anaemia.