Paper Example on Stem Cells and Their Importance

Introduction

The human body is made up of various types of specialized cells that are well organized to form blood, tissues, and organs. The stem cells help in the development of the various types of specialized cells during the early and late development stages of the human body. The ability to create this cells is achieved due to the stem cells ability to divide continually thus enabling the replacement of the worn out human body cells. Therefore a stem cell can be considered as a cell that has the potential to develop to specialized cells type in the body. The Stem cells are easily differentiated from other types of cells due to their two main unique features that include. First, under specific psychological conditions, the stem cells change to an organ or tissue-specific cells that serve a particular purpose. For instance, the specialized liver cells perform the task of detoxifying the toxins such as alcohol that we ingest in the body. Secondly, the stem cells occur as unspecialized cells that can undergo mitotic cell division after being inactive for some time to regenerate them (Stem Cell Basics, n.p). The stem cells form part of the human body since the early stage of human growth until death. For example during the development of an embryo in the human body, the stem cells help in the development of specialized organs such as the heart. While in the case of an adult, the stem cells help to replace the cells that lost after acquiring an injury or an infection. The stem cells are also used in research and clinical applications such as treatment of heart diseases and diabetes mainly due to their ability to regenerate.

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Properties of a Stem Cell

The definition of the stem cells is based on two features that include self-renewal capability and differentiation. Self-renewal is the process, by which the stem cell divides through mitotic cell division to at least one daughter cell that does not differentiate from the other daughter cells. The cells have the potential to renew them occasionally, which is not the case for other cells such as the nerve and blood cells. However, the stem cell renewal can either be maintained or expanded throughout an organism lifetime (Stem Cell Research, n.p). For instance, in a situation where the human body is in need of more white cells to fight diseases, the blood stem cells tend to renew themselves to form more blood stem cells that differentiate to form the specialized white blood cells.

Differentiation occurs when the unspecialized stem cells develop certain cellular traits that change them to form the specialized stem cell types. For the cell differentiation to take place fully the cell has to go through several stages whereby the cell becomes more specialized at each stage. The main property of a stem cell is that it can differentiate to form a specialized cell of a particular cellular linkage. Once the stem cells differentiate, they remain fixed such that they cannot develop into other cell types that are different from the specified cell lineage.

Different Types of Stem Cells

Embryonic Stem Cells

The embryonic stem cells are also referred to as the pluripotent stem cells and in most cases; they are developed from an embryo that is formed after the fertilization of an egg. The primary purpose of the embryonic stem cell is to develop new cells for the embryo to facilitate its development into a baby. The embryonic stem cells also tend to have the capability to generate other types of cells in the child's body that promote growth.

Adult Stem Cells

The adult stem cells are the undifferentiated cells that occur among the differentiated cells in a specific organ. This cells tend to renew themselves and differentiate themselves to develop the primary specialized cells in an organ. The adult stem cells perform the role of repairing and maintaining the tissues in the human body (Stem Cell Basics, n.p). This cells are considered as multipotent since they only change to specific cells in the human body, for example, the blood cells only replace the blood cells.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

This is adult stem cells that are genetically reprogrammed in the laboratory to form an embryonic stem cell after being forced to show factors that are crucial in maintaining the defining characteristics of an embryonic stem cell. As it is the case for the embryonic stem cell, the pluripotent cells can also form any cell in the human body.

The Classification of the Stem Cells

Totipotent Stem Cells

This type of stem cells triggers the development of all organisms' cell types, for example, the extraembryonic cells. A specific example of a totipotent stem cell is a mammalian embryo fertilized egg. In this case, a single stem cell goes through a series of cell divisions to form a specific extra embryonic support tissue and embryonic tissue During the initial cell division stages of the embryonic development. The embryo cells remain totipotent.

Pluripotent Stem Cells

The pluripotent stem cells tend to be restricted in their potential to develop as compared to the other stem cells populations. During the stage of embryonic development, the pluripotent stem cells from the interior cell mass of the specific pre implanting embryo Also known as a blastocyst (Stem Cell Research, n.p). The pluripotent cells originate from two sources that include cellular reprogramming of the somatic cells and the interior cell mass of the blastocyst Since the pluripotent cells can easily be cultured to distinguish the various types of specialized cells in an organism, the scientists, therefore, use stem cells to understand clearly the cellular differentiation process

Tissue-resident Stem Cells

These stem cells are considered as tissue resident since they remain in the tissue of the host for its entire lifetime. This type of stem cells is restricted in the development capabilities since they can produce all specialized cells that form the resident tissue but not cells that form another tissue type. Despite the cells, little development capabilities the resident stem cell tissue has continuously been used in the treatment of human diseases. For example, the blood stem cell is used to treat blood cancer through a bone marrow transplant.

Works Cited

Stem Cell Basics II. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/2.htm

Stem Cell Research: Uses, Types & Examples. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/stem-cell-research