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Areolar connective tissue is made of cells and extracellular
matrix ("extra-" means "outside", so the
extracellular matrix is material that is outside of the cells).
The matrix has two components, fibers and ground substance. In
the images on this page, you can see the fibers very easily--they
look like threads. The only part of the cells that is visible
is the nucleus. The ground substance has no structure, so you
can't tell that it is there. The ground substance fills all of
the spaces between the cells and fibers. |
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Some of the dark dots in the images are the nuclei of areolar
connective tissue cells. The most common cell type is the fibroblast,
but areolar connective tissue also contains macrophages, mast
cells, and white blood cells. |
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This is not a good image because it contains many bubbles in the glue that holds the cover slip in place. One of them is labeled "art" (bubbles are one type of artifact--see main page for explanation). There are many of them, of various sizes, all over the image. At the lower magnifications, these bubbles were not visible, but now they are. They make the tissue components look blurry, and can be very confusing if you don't know what they are. The collagen fibers (cf) have the largest diameter of the three fiber types and stain pink. The reticular fibers (rf) are smaller in diameter and look like thin black lines. |