In South Korea, the blood types are often undervalued as a simple means of horoscope. Yet in the medical field, it acts as a crucial role, especially when it comes to blood transfusion. This is because only certain blood types can be transfused from one patient to another.
While we knew this, we wondered why such phenomenon occurs. Thence, our fellow members of the society have done a precedent research on blood type to understand the theoretical reasoning behind this. Here, they have found that this is due to the type of antigen the erythrocyte has (red blood cell) and the type of antibodies the blood plasma possesses. While such factors decide the blood type, the consequential effect of transfusion with mismatched blood types could lead to agglutination of blood cells. In turn, we have learnt that blood type is important considering that it could take away patients’ lives.
The results of the research were well delivered via presentation. At this point, another question was raised: ‘how can we know one’s blood type?’ From this question, we decided to do an experiment based on this.
At first, we planned to use our own blood samples but due to school policy, we had to use simulated blood samples instead. At the end, we bought a ‘simulated blood test’ from ‘Biozoa’ to explore the idea of using chemicals to determine blood type.
A week before the experiment, Jaesung, donggun, inwook, jeonggyoun (Y10) have delivered a lecture about blood type simulation.
On the 20th of January, our society ran a blood type test simulation in B310 under the supervision of Mrs Prichard. The procedure was as follows 1) put a droplet of a blood sample in each site 2) Mix a droplet of the chemicals (anti A / B / D (Rh)) with the blood 3) Wait 5 minutes 4) Observe the blood samples and check whether it was agglutinated by tilting the plate. If the droplet of blood does not trickle, the blood is agglutinated which means certain antigen in the blood and the respective antibody have reacted and resulted in clumping. For example, if the blood type is B+ (B positive), the droplet with anti A agent would trickle as the other two droplets would have agglutinated by the anti agents.
The overall activity was successful considering that everyone has enjoyed it.
It was a great opportunity to participate in this experiment. I believed that blood type testing could only be taken in fancy labs, as it requires blood samples and chemicals. The test kit that our society used answered our inquiries about the experiment itself and the theory behind the classification of blood types.
Taehyun Kim (Y11)
