In this video, we're just going to do a quick introduction to the nephron. Now, everyone get comfortable because we're going to be spending the bulk of the chapter talking about the anatomy and physiology of these little guys. So nephrons are microscopic structures that are basically the functional units of the kidney. And when I say functional unit of the kidney, what I mean by that is that these are the structures that are actually going to be filtering blood and producing urine. And each kidney will usually contain about 1 to 2 million nephrons. So they are very, very abundant. If you look over at our image here, this is a nephron. And you know what? I'll say it, they're kind of weird-looking. So, if you're looking at that and you're like, what the heck is that thing? Fear not, friend, by the end of this chapter, you will understand every single microscopic inch of these little guys. I promise.

Now, nephrons are located in the renal cortex and renal medulla. You can see we have this lighter-colored region right there, that is our renal cortex. And then they can dip a bit deeper into the kidney, into this darker-colored region that is the renal medulla. And this makes sense. Right? Remember how in our last video we talked about how the cortex and the medulla are the urine-forming structures of our kidney. So it makes sense that the functional units of our kidney would be located within those regions. Now, nephrons have two main components: they have a renal corpuscle and a renal tubule. And I will see you guys in our next video to start diving into those in a bit more detail. See you there.