And that leads to more oxygen diffusing out of the red blood cell and into the cells of our tissue. Now, what happens to our bicarbonate ion? Well, the bicarbonate ion ultimately leaves the red blood cells found next to our tissues. And the way that this takes place is we have a special ion exchange protein found within our membrane of the red blood cells. And what happens is a single bicarbonate ion leaves the cell and enters the blood plasma because it can easily dissolve inside the blood plasma because unlike CO2, bicarbonate has a full negative charge, it is polar. But at the same time that our bicarbonate ion leaves the cell, in order to maintain an electrically neutral state, in order to not build any charge, we need to transport another particle, another atom that contains a negative charge into the cell.