Blood Cells

Did you know that the average adult human being have approximately 100,000 billion cells. According to WebMed, about half of our blood volume is composed of just blood cells. The blood cells start off as a single cell and go all the to the fertilized egg cell. One of the most important cells in our body are our blood cells.

Our Blood Cells are broken down into 3 different types; red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. A blood cells will start of as a stem cells and then will start to break off into our different types of blood cells, and from there on they will break down even more forming other types of cells. 

Our Red blood cells are also give the name erythocytes; white cells are also known as leukocytes and the platelets are thrombocytes. Our red blood cells are responsible for carrying oxygen throughout our body, while the white blood cells will fight infections. Our platelets are much smaller cells that help blood clot. In order for good health and protection against any illness or disease white blood cells are essential, but out of are entire blood cells we have only 1% are white blood cells. The platelets are cells that will help you stop bleeding when you cut yourself.

According to Study, our red blood cells sometimes don't have a nucleus, which means they are anucleated. Not having that nucleus gives extra space which allows for hemoglobin to be store in the red blood cells. 

There are sometimes blood disorders that have to due with our blood cells. According to NIH, Sickle cell anemia is  inherited and causes people to have an abnormal hemoglobin. Another blood disorder is ITP, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, is a condition where there is excessive bleeding, so basically your blood doesn't clot.  

http://wizznotes.com/biology/transport/blood-cells

http://igbiologyy.blogspot.com/2013/05/74-blood-cells-structure-and-functions.html

The Sweetest Lab Ever

The Sweetest Lab Ever!!

In the Sweetest Lab Ever, I was given 8 different Carbohydrates to taste, then we had to determine the level of sweetness each one had. Depending on their structure, if it was a monosaccharide, disaccharide or a polysaccharide, that all determined how sweet they each one would be. The monosaccharide were the sweetest and the polysaccharide were not sweet at all. The polysaccharides for the most part they tasted very bland and had a little bit of a pasty taste aftertaste to them. 

Some of these sugars we tasted today are in many of the foods we eat. For instance, Lactose can be found in milk and other dairy products, and Maltose  in beer and sometimes in a milkshakes. A lot of these sugars are in certain foods giving them the taste enhancement, to give it a better taste so it won't be so bland. 

What causes a human to take sweetness? Well, according to NPR when we taste a sweet food or drink it stimulates the protein receptors on the outer tip of the sweet responding taste cells which causes us to taste that sweetness. Each of our taste cells are divided up into a certain percent which allows us to be able to taste sweet, salty. spicy,sour and bitter foods. When you taste something sweet it opens up a door and excites the sweet cells which then sends signals to the brain and to certain parts of the nervous system which allows us to taste the sweet.