Question

As a class, decide which of the following would heal faster: cartilage or bone? Simple columnar or stratified squamous epithelium? Include an explanation for your argument.

Answer 1

Bone injuries would heal faster because the bones have the ablity to divide in response to an injury as opposed to cartilage cells which tend to be inactive once it has fully grown, cartilage cells contain specialised cells known as chondrocytes, which do not respond to injury immediately as they hardly divide after growth is complete. cartilage cells do not contain blood vessels so any damage will become difficult to heal. In contrast bone cells are always active and are constantly being renewed, during an injury or fracture cells on the surface of the bones turns into chondrocytes that makes a kind of cartilage filler for the cracks or fracture,and over the course of few weeks specialised bone cells called oesteoclasts eat up the cartilage filler and bone forming cells called oesteoblasts replace the whole thing with the new bone.Bones have blood supply as opposed to cartilage.

Simple columnar epithelium will heal faster than stratified squamous epithelium, stratified squamous cells are not in direct contact with blood supply as opposed to simple columnar cells which are in direct contact with blood supply enabling gas and nutrient exchange across the vessel enabling to heal faster.Simple columnar cell are made up single layer of cells where as stratified squamous epithelium are made up of several layer of cells.