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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Nov 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Comp Physiol B. 2018 May 24;188(6):899–918. doi: 10.1007/s00360-018-1164-3

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Schematic diagram illustrating the rodent renal medullary nephron segments and blood vessels. A: Four types of thin limbs of Henle’s loops exist in the rodent kidney and include the type 1 (short-looped descending thin limb), type 2 (AQP1-positive long-looped descending thin limb or DTLupper), type 3 (AQP1-negative long-looped descending thin limb or DTLlower) and type 4 (ascending thin limb). Arrow in the proximal straight segment shows flow direction; asterisk identifies thick ascending limb. B: The renal blood vessels consist of the unbranched descending and ascending vasa recta. Descending vasa recta connect to capillaries that join a network of branching AVR at any level of the medulla. The capillary networks return plasma to the cortex either directly or by way of the ascending vasa recta.