So up until this point, we've been talking about nephrons pretty generally, but there are actually 2 types of nephrons. So, we're going to go over these in this video. First up, we have cortical nephrons. Now, cortical nephrons, as their name implies, are located in the renal cortex. The majority of the nephron will be in that cortex, but the tip of their nephron loop can dip into the renal medulla. In terms of distinguishing features aside from just their location, these tend to have shorter nephron loops. If you look at our image here, you can see how the majority of this nephron is located in the renal cortex. It has this little tiny nephron loop that's just barely dipping into our renal medulla. Cortical nephrons are quite prevalent, making up about 80% of all nephrons. In terms of their function, they filter blood, modify filtrate, and also specialize in helping regulate blood pressure. Regarding their blood supply, these are fed by peritubular capillaries, which we will talk about in an upcoming video.

Then, we have our juxtamedullary nephrons. Now, this name is also very intuitive. These are located at the boundary of the renal cortex and the renal medulla. Juxtamedullary means 'next to the medulla.' For these, their nephron loop is going to go deep into the renal medulla. Because of that, these need to have long nephron loops. You can see that they look quite distinctive, located right much closer to the boundary of that cortex and the medulla. They have nice long nephron loops that go deep into that renal pyramid there. So, they look very distinctive when you see them side by side. These make up approximately 20% of all nephrons. Once again, in terms of their function, they are filtering blood, modifying filtrate, but juxtamedullary nephrons also specialize in creating concentrated urine, which we will talk about in a future video. In terms of their blood supply, these are also supplied by peritubular capillaries as well as a specialized structure called the vasa recta. So we will see that again in an upcoming video.

So, those are our 2 types of nephrons. Again, luckily, they were named very intuitively based on their location, so they're pretty easy to remember. Alright. I'll see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.