Is forming a hypothesis the first step of the scientific method

No it is not. The first step is asking a question. here is a chart that i hope will help you

advantage of using stem cells in medical research:

1.       it provides medical benefits in the fields of therapeutic cloning and regenerative medicine.

2. it provides great potential for discovering treatments and cures to a variety of diseases including parkinson disease, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, alzheimer’s disease and many more.

3. limbs and organ could be grown in lab from stem cells and then used in transplant or treat illness.

an organism's phenotype is the  form of a trait  that it  displays. for  flowercolor, a pea  plant  can  display  a phenotype of purple or white flowers. an organism's  genotype  is the alleles of a gene it contains. based on his data, mendel concluded that a phenotype can be  determined  by more than one  genotype.