Friday, March 24, 2017

assignment 8

Question 1: The leaves and stems of our plants seem to show the most variation because they show different textures, colors, and sizes. A majority of the leaves were green, but some had purple, like the kale’s stems. The texture varied with different plants with some being smooth, while some were rough with bumps.
Question 2:Many situations affect the variability of traits of our plant. Selective breeding is when organisms choosing to breed with other organisms based on qualities. With this, many traits are passed on. Moving traits from parents is called descent with modification. Another possibility for diversity are natural variations. Mutations can occur randomly, All of these different genes cause species to be different.
Question 3:The thickness of the stems were very similar. Also, the yellow leaves on the plants never changed no matter what type of plant. I think this is so because that is common throughout all the plants we did.
Question 4: They would have to insert a change in the DNA of multiple plants, and then choose the tallest or shortest plants, then further continuing to breed those. This will lead to more tall or short plants, having something much more different than it is now.(I forgot to publish this earlier which is why it is late, it was just in draft mode)


Friday, March 17, 2017

blog post 8

The first noticeable difference in our Brassica oleracea were the leaves and height, our plants leaves in the beginning were smooth and straight in a vertical formation but after a couple of weeks the plants leaves started to become more ruffly and waxing. They also didn't reach the stem in the beginning and now they have grow and the outer leaf reaches the stem. also the stem measured in the beginning from the ground to the highest point was .5 ft and now they measure up to 1.6 ft.

Brassica oleracea has many characteristics I believe selective breeding helped aid in the process. selective breeding is where offspring of a plant has certain phenotypes from their parents and have selected specific traits like ruffly and waxing leaves. This can also be know as artificial breeding since the baby plant was not naturally made. And some plants go through mutations to get the desired offspring. Also some traits you see in the offspring of the children plants are seen because of descent with modification. from the parent plant traits and genes are passed down. In nature natural variation can be seen in plants with different characteristics because of the need to survive in the "real world"

I think the characteristics in our plants that is the most similar is the stem. The stem most likely stayed similar through out its life time, because it has no need to change since its main job is to transport nutrients and to bring water to the flower. In the beginning the stem was .3 ft and now it is 1.2 ft. This also is seen because they have not changed in shape or texture.

Plant breeders would have to grab a plant that is the same species and can inter breed. Then they would have to find a plant with specific traits then grab the child plant and see which had the biggest change, after they would breed those two plants. After a while they would have a very good plant chain that would create the desired plant the breeders wanted.


Wednesday, March 15, 2017

assignment 8

Question 1: When I was outside looking at the brassica plants i was looking for common difference between all of them. I noticed many different things when i looked at the plants and the biggest difference i had seen was the many variation's  of different shaped and colored leafs. Some of The leaves where  very big with holes and some where very small with not holes. The leaves also came in purple, green , light green , and some yellow.

Question 2: I believe that these plants all have different traits and genes because people have been adding artificial selection to make the best suitible plant for all environments.As people keep adding to the plants it also causes these plants to make mutations in there genes witch has also changed round the plant a lot.Also the plants also create natural variants that the plant made its own by changing around its genes for the environment

Question 3:AS I was looking at the brassica plants I did not see much differences but I did notice one constant thing between all the plants and that was that all the plants were relatively the same size. As I was walking I noticed they were about all the same size I think this is because they all come from the same ancestor plant. The ancestor plant must of been the same size as they are now because it has caused all of them to be the same size.

Question 4:For plant breeders to achieve this they had to not try to mess with how fast the plant grows because if they did it would cause the plant to keep growing and getting bigger.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017


This is the Brassica flower that we started with for our dissection. You can see the petals which are hiding the stamen, carpel, and filaments from view.

In the plants I see grow in the garden, ATP and NADPH fix carbon dioxide into glucose production. This couldn't happen without the help of Rubisco, a highly abundant protein that catalyzes this production. Rubisco is one of two main protein enzymes that help with photosynthesis. The other is PEPC. PEPC is a function in the C4 cycle, the CAM cycle, and the citric acid cycle.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Anthers and Stigmas and Styles, Oh My! assignment 7-Charlie

Fertilization of flowering plants begins with pollinators. Bees,  birds, and other animals that may brush up against plants transfer pollen from one flower to another. When a pollinator touches a flower, sticky pollen found on the anther grabs on  to the creature. Next time that animal touches a flower, the pollen is moved onto the sticky stigma. Now that the flower has been pollinated it goes onto germination. Each particle of pollen extends a pollen tube down the style, towards the ovary. In the final step of fertilization, the sperm found in pollen travels down the pollen tube and joins with an ovule, forming a zygote.
This is a flower from a brassica oleracea before the dissection.  The appearance of the  petals on this flower will be essential to start the reproductive process. The petals allow the flower to be pollinated which allows the female gametes to be fertilized.
This is the anthers surrounding the stigma under the microscope at 40x magnification. When both in the same flower the stigma, the female reproductive body, and the stamen, the male reproductive body, make up a perfect flower. However, in some species of plants, each plant can be entirely female or male.

art of the flower called the stamen. The stamen is made up of 2 parts. First, the filament is a thin, clear spire that sprouts out from the foundation of the flower. At the top of the filament is the anther. The anther is where all the plant's sperm cells are located, which it creates and lets go.
Here is the female reproductive system of the flower, the carpel. The female reproductive system also includes two parts. First, is the style, which is below the other component, the stigma. The stigma is sticky on top and brings in pollen through various types of pollination.
This picture is of the ovary and the ovaries. The ovary holds the ovaries also known as the female gametes of the flower.  The ovules will be fertilized when pollen that has traveled from the stigma, through the style, and then finally into the ovary.

Friday, February 17, 2017

assignment 7

This image shows anthers surrounding a stigma. They are all part of the same flower. When both male and female parts appear in the same flower, the flower is said to be perfect. In some species of flowering plant, the male and female parts are located in separate flowers (some flowers are male, some are female), and yet another situation is when the male and female flowers are on entirely separate individuals (some plants are male, some are female).
Here is a view (40x) of the male reproductive anatomy of a flower, known as the stamen. It has a stalk called the filament coming up from the base of the flower and at the end of this stalk is a part called the anther. This portion of the stamen produces and releases pollen grains, which contain the plant's male gametes (sperm cells).



This is a view (40x) of the female anatomy of a flower called the carpel. The carpel consists of a stalk called a style with a sticky tip called a stigma. It is this sticky tip to which pollen grains adhere (get stuck).

Monday, January 23, 2017

blog post #6

Our plant has grown over time because of many reasons of biomass. One reason is because our plant used cell division where the plants cells duplicate each other and make more of themseleves. Another way it does it mitosis when two daughters cells each have have the same and kind of chromosomes. It  also uses photosynthesis when the plant takes in energy from the sun and uses it to grow. Another thing is cellar respiration and that is when biochemical energy from nutrients into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and then release waste products. Our plant also uses phosphoenolpyruvate carboxlajesis to take out bacterias