Oocytes, What Makes Them Special?

Oocytes- Female Reproductive Cells

Oocytes are haploid cells, found in the ovary that might undergo meiotic division to form an ovum. A vitelline layer coated with protein receptors lines the outside of the egg plasma membrane of an oocyte. Cortical granule content lines the inside of the plasma membrane that form into cortical granule vesicles. Oocytes have all the same organelles of a typical eukaryotic cell but are specialized towards making an ovum during a female reproductive system and are present in females until menopause. Oocytes are classified under ovarian tissue.

Sperm cells attaching to Oocyte Cell as the first step in the formation of an ovum

WORKS CITED:
"Oocyte." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oocyte
"Egg Cell." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_cell

Tao, Tao, and Alfonso Del Valle. "Human Oocyte and Ovarian Tissue Cryopreservation and Its Application." Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics. Springer US, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015. URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596676/

Why is it Sweet?

During class today, we tasted different types of sugars to determine how the structure of a carbohydrate affects its taste. The eight types of sugars were sucrose, glucose (dextrose), fructose, galactose, maltose, lactose, starch, and cellulose. We rated each sugar out of 0-200 in sweetness. Through the results of the lab, I speculate that the number of rings determines how sweet a sugar molecule is. Sucrose, a disaccharide, served as the control for this experiment, with a sweetness of 100. The color of sucrose is white and its texture was granular. For example the sweetest of the sugars, fructose,with a rating of 200, is a monosaccharide, a one ring structure. Glucose, another monosaccharide, followed with a rating of 110). The only exception to this rule was galactose with a rating of 50, even though it is a monosaccharide. We gave lactose, a disaccharide, a rating of 60, maltose, a disaccharide, a 10, and starch and cellulose, both polysaccharides, a rating of because they were the most bitter.

I predicted that fructose would be the sweetest because I have seen the ingredient high fructose corn syrup in juices like Capri-sun, sodas like Pepsi, plenty of sugary breakfast cereals like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, processed pastries, candy bars, cookies, and cakes. I also recall that lactose and galactose as being part of those baby supplemental milk powders. Although I have never had beer, I know maltose is in beer. Cellulose is found in vegetables with many leaves like brussel sprouts and starch is found in rice.

According to Dr. Robert Margolskee on NPR news, sweetness is detected by taste buds on your tongue. He says,"When you get a sweet substance, a suar or something artificial like saccharine, it stimulates these receptor proteins on the very outer tips of the sweet-responding taste cells." According to Anthony Domanico, author of the article, "Why Are Some Sugars Sweeter Than Others?" on CNet, some sugars are sweeter than others because they have a more triangular structure at the molecular level as explained by the Sweetness Triangle theory. He says, "This[the triangular shape] helps it[the sugar molecule] bind to the sweetness receptors in our tongues, and the better the molecule fits the Sweetness triangle, the sweeter the taste." . According to an article on popsci.com by Emily Elert, "FYI:Why Do Some Foods Taste Bad To Some People And Good To Others," the reason why people taste differently is because the number of papillae- bumps on our tongues filled with taste buds- varies from one individual to another. And According to Pubmed Health, there are taste buds for sweetness, sour, salty, bitter, and umami and some people might have more papillae than others to host the various taste buds. The greater the number of papillae the more overwhelming the taste is. This is the reason why we were able to rank the same sugar samples differently.


Works Cited:

Palca, Joe. "Getting a Sense of How We Taste Sweetness." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. URL: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/11/134459338/Getting-a-Sense-of-How-We-Taste-Sweetness
Anthony, Domanico. "Why Are Some Sugars Sweeter than Others? Chew on This - CNET." CNET. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. URL: http://www.cnet.com/news/why-are-some-sugars-sweeter-than-others-chew-on-this/
Elert, Emily. "FYI: Why Does Some Food Taste Bad To Some People And Good To Others?" Popular Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. URL: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/fyi-why-does-some-food-taste-bad-some-people-and-good-others
How Does Our Sense of Taste Work? U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072592/