Cell Specialization: Stem Cell

Stem cells are similar to any other eukaryotic cells found in the body and have the same types of organelles. As this article states, in adults they are found in bone marrow or fat and in developing embryos, playing a key role in the early development of animals and humans.
These cells are known as specialized cells and divide when the body needs new cells. According to the National Institute of Health, they are the body's internal repair system. They can specialize themselves and become another type of cell. They can become tissue cells, blood cells, brain cells, and many other types of cells depending on what the body needs. For example when the body is damaged and a muscle cell needs to be replaced, stem cells can reprogram themselves and become specialized muscle cells to replace those that were lost. According to this article, in embryos of developing humans stem cells are essential to the development of the vital organs and the different body parts. The ability of stem cells to self renew and the flexibility in its development play a vital role in disease research.
Because the stem cell is unspecialized, it cannot be categorized into any of the tissue types because it can actually become any of them. They can become muscle cells, connective tissue, nerve cells, and any other cell that the body needs.

Human Embryonic Cells

Sweetness Lab

 In this lab our group tasted different types of carbohydrates and gave each a rating based on the taste. Before doing the lab, we researched the function and the structure of each carbohydrate and labeled them as either monosaccharide, disaccharide, or polysaccharide. We made predictions about whether they would be sweet or not.
 After giving each carbohydrate a rating, there was a relationship between the level of sweetness and the amount of rings found in the structure. The ones with less rings, the monosaccharides and disaccharides, such as fructose and sucrose tasted sweeter than the ones with more rings, the polysaccharides, such as starch and cellulose.
This relationship does seem correct because fructose  and sucrose are used as sweeteners that are found in many foods. They are used in juices and sweet snacks. It also makes sense that cellulose and starch are bland because they are not usually used in foods, but are used to make material and make up the structure of plants.
According to this article on the sense of taste, Humans use taste buds which are made up of taste receptor cells. These receptor cells are stimulated by chemicals and through action potentials, the signal is transferred to the brain as taste. Receptor cells are specialized to detect certain tastes like sweetness or bitterness. The tasters in our lab rated each sample based on how sweet it was. The tasters could tell if one sample was sweeter than another because there were more sweetness molecules in the sample that bound to the sweetness receptors on the tongue.