It secretes the waste products into our urine, which is eventually excreted by our body. Now, in this lecture, we're going to focus focus on the structure of the nephron. So let's begin by taking a look at this diagram that describes what an individual nephron actually looks like. Now recall that our kidney is divided into two regions. The outer portion of the kidney is known as the renal cortex, while the inner portion of the kidney is known as the renal medulla. And this dashed line basically separates the cortex from the medulla region in our kidney.