Abstract
Recently the lung is not just centered for respiration around the gas-transfer on alveolar levels; it is important to many other vital metabolic processes, including biosynthetic, antibacterial secretory activation, detoxifying and sometimes endocrine activities.
We have developed a rapid freezing method and sought an approach in which the anatomic features of the living lung can be suddenly fixed under known physiologic conditions. First, we find that main unit of respiratory function is not in alveoli (the end of the 24th division of the bronchial tree), but is as a unit, below respiratory bronchiole (the 16-18th division). Now we call this “terminal respiratory unit”. Besides, making the similar features of atelectasis, bronchial athma, emphysema and edema, we get many clews of clarifying the developing mechanism of those with our method of the study on relationship between the structure and function.
Further, these method will contribute for investigating metabolic processes etc.
