Did you know…without specialization, you will be just a lump of cells?

Organisms like animals and plants are made up of many or multiple cells. So, they are multicellular organisms. All the cells of multicellular organisms do not do the same thing, they perform different tasks. For example, the cells of the eyes are specialized for sight while the cells of the ears are specialized for hearing. These specialized cells are not specialized when they are first formed. All cells are unspecialized cells when first formed. Through a special process called cellular differentiation, unspecialized cells transform into various specialized cells. The unspecialized cells that can later transform into specialized cells are called stem cells.

For an unspecialized cell to be able to transform into a stem cell, it has to have 2 characteristics.

i. Potency; It needs to have the ability to transform into a specialized cell

ii. Self-renewal: It needs to be able to multiply itself while in the unspecialized stem form.

Before we became Superman, Batman, and Black Panther, we were first a mass of stem cells, just like the photo of fuzzy-looking balls on my webpage which is a scanning electron micrograph of stem cells. The mass of stem cells is called an embryo. Overtime, those stem cells transformed into specialized cells that make different parts of our body to allow our body perform its various tasks.

To learn more about potency, come back for part 2!