Skip to main content

Blog Post #6

1) My groups plant has been getting larger and growing over the course of the past few months. It has been preforming the process of photosynthesis to add biomass and the amount of resources available to the plant. Photosynthesis is one of the main ways a plant comes to thrive in it's environment, this is when plants take sunlight to convert CO2 into O2 and high energy sugar. Despite the fact that it's winter right now and the sun isn't out as much, our plants have still been able to take the available light energy and use it in photosynthesis. Another big process that is occurring to allow our plants to grow is known as Mitosis. Mitosis is the replication and division of cells inside a living organism to allow that organism to grow and stay healthy. Mitosis is also vital to allowing space for new cells to take up a spot in the organism, as the organisms grow and mature they'll need more cells to keep up with the rapid advances in size and functions. This is made especially clear as without this function, new cells wouldn't be created and the existing cells would die off much faster than if there were also newer cells along side it. Cellular Respiration is another occurrence that keeps our plant growing and healthy. During Cellular Respiration, the plant can create energy such as NADP+ and ATP, these are high energy sugars that keep a plant functioning. ATP is responsible for transporting the necessary energy for cellular metabolic activities while NADP+ is relevant for moving energized elections around the plant during photosynthesis.

2) Our plants would make these enzymes through a long process of translation and transcription where it starts with a strand of DNA and ends with the creation of a proteins. This happens because most enzymes are also proteins, if the cell were to make a protein, most the time the cells are making an enzyme too. To start this process, helicase unzips the double stranded structure of the DNA while RNA polymerase follows shortly behind and adds RNA nucleotides onto a single stranded replication of the initial DNA sequence. This RNA strand stores the exact same genetic information that the DNA had except the RNA, is expendable to the cell while DNA is not. Because of this, it's the RNA that takes the trip to the outside of the nucleus to the Ribosome, this is where the protein is created. The Ribosome will begin to read the mRNA in sequences of three nucleotides called codons, this begins when the Ribosome finds the "start" codon (AUG) which relays to the Ribosome to start building the protein. Each codon represents a different Amino Acid which are the building blocks of all proteins, a specialized RNA known as tRNA (Transfer RNA) brings all the necessary Amino Acids to the Ribosome where it's then shaped into the correct protein that the RNA strand has been coded for. The specific proteins that our plant will want to create for photosynthesis are known as Phosphoglycerate kinase (PKG) and ribulose 1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). Through the processes earlier explained, the plants would easily be able to tell that it needs RKG and Rubisco for photosynthesis, after realizing that it needs these two enzymes the process would begin to create the needed enzymes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blog post #7

Fertilization occurs in flowering plants through the process of fertilization. The center of the flower has long thin filaments with anthers at the top. This is called the stamen. Four pollen sacks are located in the plants anthers which contain MMCs, Micro Mother Cells. Each of the pollen sacks produces eight pollen grains, the sperm cells from the MMC. Once the pollen grains inside each of the sacks are ready the anthers will burst open vomiting the sticky pollen onto the flowers stamen in a process called dehiscence. The flowers bright colorful pedals lure insects inside to drink its nectar, located at the flowers base. Once the insects climb into the flower the sticky pollen from the anthers gets stuck on its feet, legs, or body. In the process of cross pollination the insect that collects this sticky pollen will transfer it to another flower pollinating it in the process. In the process of self pollination the pollen will be moved from the stamen to the pistol/carpal of the flowe...

Blog Post #5: Lauren Shearer (By Colin Mccombs)

For the Story of the Seed project I interviewed my very close friend Lauren Shearer. She talked about all of the experiences that she had while she was working on the project and her thoughts on the project. She learned about the different variables tat need to be considered while growing the plants. The process of a growing plant differs with each plant, if you change pretty much anything when you tried to grow multiple plants. She was amazed at how fast and tall their "Control group" plant grew. It not only went quick, bit also with the right amount of soil;water, it would be healthy. Sadly, what surprised me that shouldn't have, was that the last pot with Dr Pepper did not grow at all. Lauren was forced to stop and think harder when her team had to figure out the watering schedule for our plants. We had to map out the correct days and the amount of water for each pot so that the project would work successfully. Her entire experience of her project made her laugh be...

Blog Post #8- A Matter of Selection (Jesse Zalk)

1)  The   Brassica oleracea plant, a seemingly boring specimen, does manage to have variation in itself. My team, seemingly lazy at the moment, did not want to join me to the garden excursion, so I went by myself to measure data. The data I decided to record was the width of the Brassica Oleracea and the length of the leaves on the plant (Both Kale and Brussel Sprouts). I decided that the leaf lengths had more variation then the plant height. Here is the data that I collected. Leaf Length Plant 1: leaf 1 - 11,5 cm Plant 1: leaf 2 - 9.5 cm Plant 1: leaf 3 - 13.5 cm Plant 1: leaf 4 -  10.5 cm Plant 1: leaf 5 - 11 cm Plant 1: leaf average - 11.2 cm Plant 2: leaf 1 - 9.5 cm Plant 2: leaf 2 - 8 cm Plant 2: leaf 3 - 8.5 cm Plant 2: leaf 4 - 10 cm Plant 2: leaf 5 - 11 cm Plant 2: leaf average - 9.4 cm Plant 3: leaf 1 - 14.4 cm Plant 3: leaf 2 - 13.4 cm Plant 3: leaf 3 - 12.8 cm Plant 3: leaf 4 - 13.7 cm Plant 3: leaf 5 - 14.1 cm Plan...