Re: Why do monocytes have a horse shoe or kidney shaped necleus?

Dear Travis,
that's a very interesting and hard question. Because it refers to how this 
kidney shaped nucleus is achieved. To my best knowledge, we don't know all 
the factors which lead a cell nucleus to assume a certain shape. However, 
a few factors like the proliferative rate of a cell influences its size, 
for example high proliferating rate cells usually have big nucleus, like 
monocytes, lymphocytes, cancer cells and so on. Besides, it also keeps a 
relation with how differentiated a cell is, usually, as more 
differentiated is a cell, less it proliferate and smaller is the nucleus. 
An important factor in cancer prognostic evaluation(severity, expected 
response to therapy, natural history and other factors)is the nucleus 
features, more aggressive tumors usually have bigger nucleus, indicating 
it proliferates a lot! If you find out more on this plz let me know( 
vitorpordeus@gmail.com)
Monocytes leave bloodstream and penetrate into tissues of the body, and 
differentiate as macrophages which work as antigen presenting cells that 
are able to ingest smaller particles and cells, process it and present it 
to lymphocytes, which in turn influence the whole immune reactivity, all 
this is fundamental for body maintenance,i.e. for cleaning cellular rests, 
destroying invading microorganisms, and many other physiological functions.
For further reading i recommend Professor Parslow's Medical Immunology 
10th edition... ther you'll find very detailed information in monocytes 
and many other immune system elements.
All the best,
Vitor