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The Endocrine System

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The Endocrine System
BIO / 101

The Endocrine System
The endocrine system is defined as any system within an animal that regulates the functioning of the organism or is used in the production of hormones. These systems can range anywhere from a simple center in the nervous system to a more intricate collection of glands that are in the human endocrine system. Qualified endocrinologists have been analyzing the advancement of the endocrine systems and the roles that they play in an animals’ adaptive behavior in an environment as well as their production of offspring.
It is surprising to find that the research of endocrinology in mammals has been advanced by research in non-mammal animals. For example, the mechanisms in the body that control salt and water content were discovered in fishes first, this led to the discovery of comparable functions in mammals. The understanding in how the endocrine system is structured in non-mammals offers critical information into understanding how the human endocrine system functions.
The most basic endocrine system deals with the secretion and storage of hormones within nervous tissue or neurohemal organs. These hormones can be secreted directly into circulation of the body or stored into organs that have direct contact with the blood vessels that allow the hormones to be put into circulation. There are cells located within the endocrine glands that stem from various nerve cells that have traveled during the evolutionary process to different locations in the body from the nervous system itself. These types of endocrine glands are defined in arthropods as well as vertebrates in which they are more developed. It has been discovered that many of previously attributed hormones of vertebrates are secreted by invertebrates like the pancreatic hormone insulin. There has also been a discovery of invertebrate hormones located in the tissues of a vertebrate; this is true even for humans. Unicellular animals and plants have also demonstrated the creation of chemical regulators that appear similar to hormones in complex animals. This shows that endocrine system regulators have prehistoric beginnings and also controlled the main changes that happened during the evolutionary process.
The human endocrine system is a product of evolution over millions of years. So it is not shocking that endocrine systems of primitive vertebrates have similar endocrine glands and related hormones that are seen in the human endocrine system. When examining the primitive vertebrates there is an ability to document the appearance of the hypothalamic-pituitary-target organ axis. All vertebrates including humans, display a similar hypothalamic-pituitary-target organ axis.

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