Jun

14

2022

What happens to the size and content of reticulocytes as they mature into red blood cells?

By William Aird

They become smaller, they acquire a larger surface-to-volume ratio, they lose their organelles and the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration increases.

On Wright-Giemsa stained peripheral blood, reticulocytes have a purplish hue owing to the presence of residual RNA. These are called polychromatophilic cells (arrow).