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Home Q & A Board Biology-Related Homework Help Anatomy and Physiology
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galpinj galpinj
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8 years ago
Hi guys,

I've spent a good hour trying to separate these two terms, but still have some trouble. From what I've learned, secretion is the active movement of various molecules outside of the cell, whereas excretion is the passive movement of molecules.

Would exocrine glands, like the salt glands in birds, be secretory or excretory？ The tubules are called "secretory tubules" and the cells "secretory cells", but it seems that the transport epithelia are just moving substances from the blood to the lumen of the tubule, which excretes the salt. Likewise, would Chief cells in the stomach be considered secretory or excretory? They are part of the EXocrine system and are releasing a substance into an outside environment (in this case the stomach); yet everyone still calls them secretory cells.

Any help is really appreciated. I've found so many different definitions of these two terms, and occasionally the definitions have countered each other!
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8 years ago
The difference between excretion and secretion is that excretion is the process of removing, or ejecting material that has no further utility, especially from the body while secretion is any substance that is secreted by an organism or secretion can be the act of hiding something.
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