[ intro ] At some point—like, if you’ve donated
blood— you might have been asked about your blood
type. And even if you don’t know what yours is, you’re probably aware that you could have A, B, AB or O blood, and that your blood can be positive or negative. But that’s not the whole story, because there are potentially millions of
blood types out there. There are so many possible blood types because of the way blood types are defined. You see, your blood type is defined by the antigens present in your blood. Antigens are anything that can elicit a response from your body’s self-defense system, though your immune system normally ignores the ones that belong to you. And you can find antigens on cells throughout
your body, with different cells having different combinations
of antigens. The ones that matter for blood classification
are found on the surfaces of your body’s red blood
cells. Simply put, your particular blood type depends on which
antigens are or aren’t there. Like, if you have AB blood, that means you have both the A and B antigens
in the ABO blood group. You could be just A, or just B, or if you’re
O, you don’t have either. But those ABO antigens are just two of over
600 blood antigens identified by the International Society of
Blood Transfusion, and the list hasn’t stopped growing yet. Many of these antigens fit into blood group
systems, like ABO, each of which is defined by a gene
at a single site or by multiple genes that are closely related. And all of us have these genes— your type for a particular group depends on
how your genes translate into the antigens that end up on the outside
of your blood cells. There are 36 blood group systems currently
recognized. So your full blood type, if written out, would include all 36 of these groups and the variants you have or don’t have
for all of those 600-plus antigens. Which is why we can say that there are millions
of potential blood types. Of course, there are only 8 common ones, and that’s because many of these antigens
are found in practically everyone, while others are present in only a few individuals. For example, the SARA antigen has only ever been seen in
two families, while 99.96% of people have the Vel antigen. And blood groups can get really complicated,
too. Just look at the Rh blood group. That’s the group that gives you a positive
or negative blood type— like, if you’re AB+, the positive part generally means you have
the Rh antigen called Rh(D). But, to make things more confusing, whether your blood is considered positive or negative may depend on how much of the
antigen you have in your system, since that can impact what sorts of antibodies
your immune system makes to protect you. And D is just one of over /60/ known antigens
in the Rh group. So positive or negative doesn’t even begin
to capture your overall Rh blood type. In fact, one of the rarest blood types in
the world occurs if you have none of the antigens in the Rh
group. If you’re one of the about 50 people with
this blood type— which is known as Rh null— your body will reject the blood from practically
anyone else. And the Rh group isn’t the only blood group
where having no antigens can be a matter of life or death. Another example is the Diego group. Its antigens are proteins that help the lungs
and kidneys perform essential functions. Like with the ABO group, there are two primary antigens, a and b, that determine a person’s Diego blood type. But unlike the ABO group, where “O” or
the lack of antigens is most common, there has only been one documented case of
someone lacking both of these key Diego antigens. Sometimes, though, having no antigens can
help you out. For example, one of the malarial parasites uses antigens
in the Duffy blood group to target and infiltrate cells, so having no antigens from that group can
make you more resistant to the disease. But it also means there’s a chance that
your body will attack another person’s blood if you’re given a transfusion, since the cells you receive could have Duffy
antigens on them that your body sees as foreign. The good news is that despite all the potential
blood types you could have, for the most part, the ABO-Rh blood typing
we’re used to does a pretty good job of matching people’s
blood. With this system, if you receive blood from someone with the
same ABO-Rh type, there’s a 99.8 percent chance your blood
will be compatible with your donor’s. For some reason, your body’s immune system doesn’t go after
every antigen equally, so you don’t usually need to know what version
of every single known antigen you have. And if you do want to be extra sure, there are ways that doctors can tell if you
have a rare blood type. For example, they can screen for unexpected antibodies
that could potentially target donated red blood cells, or perform crossmatching, where your blood is mixed with a donor’s
to see how the two react. Doing these two steps racks your safety margin
up to 99.95 percent. And if you do happen to have a rare blood
type like Rh null, don’t fret. Efforts like the International Rare Donor
Panel work hard to make sure you can get the blood you need,
no matter where in the world you are. One person needing a transfusion had a rare
blood type delivered from the UK to Cameroon. That’s about four thousand miles away! So even if your blood is literally one in
a million, you can be pretty confident that you’ll
be able to find someone whose blood matches yours. And, I guess, you could say that’s one of
the parts of being human — having something in common with other people while being unique in your own special way. Blood types ultimately boil down to microscopic
differences between red blood cells. And if you were to zoom in to see those differences
and really watch what goes on in your own bloodstream, you’d see a bustling and bizarre world. In fact, when you look at pretty much anything
under a powerful enough microscope, all sorts of wonderfully fantastic lifeforms
are revealed. And that’s kind of the point of our new
sister channel produced by Complexly: Journey to the Microcosmos. Journey to the Microcosmos is all about bringing
you closer to the world of very, very small things in a relaxing way. It pairs James Weiss’s incredible microscopic
footage with Hank Green’s soothing narration and Andrew Huang’s meditative music, so you can just kick back and marvel at the
microscopic realm. You can check it out for yourself at the link
in the description. And as always, thanks for watching! [ outro ]
Really interesting. I had no idea about any of this. Learned something new, today :)
My blood type is boring but recently I have had quite a few needles stuck in me and three different nurses have said I have really nice veins. I'm not sure what to do with that information, except perhaps take up heroin.