What Is the Main Function of the Pituitary Gland?

Short answer: the pituitary is the body’s chief endocrine dispatcher. From its seat in the sella turcica at the base of the brain, it releases hormones that keep core processes—growth, stress response, reproduction, lactation, thyroid function, and water balance—within healthy ranges. It does this under minute-to-minute direction from the hypothalamus, using exquisitely tuned feedback loops…

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Holocrine glands

Holocrine Secretion Occurs outside the Tight Junction Barrier in Multicellular Glands: Lessons from Claudin-1-Deficient Mice Holocrine secretion is a specific mode of secretion involving secretion of entire cytoplasmic materials with remnants of dead cells, as observed in multicellular exocrine glands of reptiles, birds, and mammals. Here, we found that sebaceous glands in mice, representative of…

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