Now that we understand what the pancreas produces, that pancreatic juice, we want to talk about the structure of the pancreas. So first, we'll talk about the gross anatomy of the pancreas, and then we'll focus on the microscopic anatomy. Alright. For the gross anatomy, let's orient ourselves to our image here. We see the pancreas, that sort of long yellowish organ there, and we see the small intestine kind of wrapped around one end of it there, specifically that first section of the small intestine, the duodenum. And running in front, that green duct there, that's going to be the bile duct. Alright. So for the gross anatomy, there isn't a lot to distinguish the different parts of the pancreas, but we do give the different regions names just so that we can refer to them specifically. We're going to start with the tail, and we'll highlight that there in orange. The tail, we're just going to say, that's the pointy end. The pointy end is going to be lateral. It’s sort of sticking off to the left side of your body, tucked under the stomach there. Well, if the tail is the pointy end, then the head, well, the head is going to be the round end on the other side. The round end that's medial, again, kind of tucked up against the small intestine there, and it's going to be wider and rounder than the tail. In between, well, between the tail and the head, you find the body. The body is going to be that middle section in the middle. Now again, there isn't really much structurally different between these, and there aren't hard and fast lines between the head, tail, and body. And sometimes people refer to the neck of the pancreas as well. We don't have it here because it's not always referred to, but you can figure out where it is. The neck would be the space between the head and the body. There you go. Alright. The other, well, really, the main structure that you're going to notice on the pancreas here is that main duct that's running down the middle of it. There, we've highlighted in orange. That's the pancreatic duct. This is going to be the main central duct of the pancreas. That pancreatic juice is going to travel down so that it can enter into the small intestine. Now, I also just want to note there is another duct on this drawing, so we want to call it out. The second duct that you see is the accessory pancreatic duct. Now there's a good chance you're not going to be responsible for the accessory pancreatic duct, though, because it's not always present. Not everybody has one, and people who do have one, sometimes it's in different places. We want to call it out because it is on this drawing, and for some people, that's another way that pancreatic juice can get into the small intestine. Alright. So that's our gross anatomy. Let's focus on the microscopic anatomy. Alright. So this is our image for the microscopic anatomy. You can see here the pancreas is made up of all these sort of little balls or clusters of cells connected by these dots running through the middle. So those clusters of cells, we're going to call the acini. Right? The acini are going to be these clusters of secretory cells, and we'll highlight one here. So this would be one acinus and many acini. So this acinus has these secretory cells, and the individual cells we are going to call, well, here's one acinar cell. So these acinar cells in the acini secrete these inactive digestive enzymes. Remember, the pancreatic juice is filled with digestive enzymes, but they don't actually get turned on until they make it to the small intestine because we don't want those digestive juices digesting the pancreas itself. Alright. Well, those inactive digestive enzymes get released by the acinar cells into the ducts. So we can see here, this is a duct. And all of these ducts are going to run together, and they're going to transport the secretions to that central pancreatic duct. All right. So all these ducts run, carry those enzymes to the pancreatic duct so that they can make it into the small intestine. But lining these ducts, we have also duct cells. So these duct cells line the ducts, and these are also going to have secretions. In terms of the pancreatic juice, these duct cells, they make the juice. Alright? These secrete the water and also the bicarbonate. Alright, the water. Remember, we said the pancreas makes over a liter of pancreatic juice a day. So this is a one-liter bottle. This is something like ten times the size of the pancreas. So these duct cells are releasing a ton of liquid over the day that go into the small intestine. Now along with that liquid, there's also bicarbonate. Remember, that bicarbonate is alkaline. It raises the pH, and that is there to neutralize the chyme because it's going to be mixing with the chyme in the small intestine, and that chyme will have just come from the stomach, and it'll be that really low pH because it has that stomach acid in it. Alright. So that's the gross anatomy. That's the microscopic anatomy. We're going to look at all the different ducts that connect the pancreas, the gallbladder, the liver to the small intestine. We're going to look at all that stuff next. It's going to be a good time. I'll see you there.