FUNCTIONS OF CONNECTIVE TISSUE
Connective tissue performs a wide range of important functions throughout the body. These include:
– Providing structural support. Connective tissue supports and helps maintain the shape of other tissues and organs and, in the case of cartilage and bone, provides structural support for the body as a whole.
– Connecting tissues and organs binding different tissues and organs together and helps maintain their structural relationships.
– Filling spaces between tissues and organs helping to support and maintain them and their structural organization.
– Providing passageways for blood vessels, lymphatic vessels and nerves.
– The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an essential role in the nutrition and functional regulation of connective tissue cells and of cells in other tissues. Substances such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, metabolic products, hormones, and many other molecules can diffuse through the ECM between blood vessels and cells.
– Storing energy. Adipose tissue stores energy in the form of fat within adipocytes.
– Connective tissue participates in immune and inflammatory responses. Cells such as lymphocytes and cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system help protect the body against microorganisms, foreign substances, and tissue damage.