Blog Post 7- Audrey Malone

Blog Post #7 - Elena

 How do flowering plants (angiosperms) like our Brassica oleracea plants reproduce?

In plant reproduction for Angiosperms, it is good to identify the male and female part of a flower.  On flowers there are the stamens, the male part, which include the filament and the anthers. The female part of the flower is called the pistil that includes the ovary, stigma and the style. The anthers are a fluffy part of the flower that produced pollen, and the stigma is a sticky part of the flower that is supposed to have pollen stick to it. 
Now pollinators play a big role in plant reproduction because they transport the pollen. Flower petals attract bees or other pollinators to come to it.  When the pollinator lands on the flower it rubs against the stamens, and little pollen grains stick to the pollinator. As that pollinator flies around and lands on another flower some of those mature pollen grains will come off and stick to the stigma. 
The pollen that sticks to the stigma has a tube cell and a generative cell. The tube cell from the pollen grain is released and travels down the pollen tube that is in the pistil of the flower. The tube cell travels down the stigma to the style to the inside area of the ovary. The generative cell then travels down the tube and will divide into two sperm cells.  The sperm cell will them try and target an ovule. Each ovule has potential to develop into a seed if it is fertilized, and has anegg cell and two polar nuclei. Once the sperm cells have found the ovule, one sperm cell will go into the egg cell and create a zygote, while the other will join with he two polar nuclei and develop into an endosperm. This process is called double fertilization. After the egg cell has become fertilized the ovule will develop into a seed, using the endosperm as food for development. 

Blog Post #7 - Alia Latimer

This first picture is of the flower before any of the dissection occoured. This particular flower was procured by the Mickey long center in the Humming Bird garden. The flower is an adaptation for the group of plants known as angiosperms which is the great majority of plants today.

This second picture is of the male reproductive system of this flower.We have peeled back the petals for a clear veiw. The anthers are where pollen and sperm are stored, the pollen being a trait developed long ago so that the need of water for the plants was no longer nessecary. originally the sperm would swim through the water between clumpings of plants, but ultimately couldn't go very far. With pollen there are now multiple ways of transfer.

In the third picture we have opened up to reveal some of the pollen inside. This pollen carrieres the sperm producing cells in contact with the eggs in order to create a seed. This allows the sperm to be carried by wind, not only meaning that it's carried much farther, spreading genetic diversity to a community, but also allowing it to better survivve on land and have to rely less on water.

In the fourth picture we have the stigma, located close to the opening of the flower. They have hairs that trap pollen that will fertilize the egg. To further increase efficiency most stigmas are also cover in a waxy or sticky solution. When Bees or other pollenators go from flower to flower they will land by or on the stigma transferring pollen from other flowers to the flower further helping with genetic diversity. When a bee flies several miles it is introducing plants from all over a neighborhood.

Our fith the picture is of the ovules. This is where the eggs are held and stored to be furtilized by sperm, and then released. You can see the eggs in the picture as well, hapliod cells that will eventually become a new plant. Those eggs become equipt with all they need to grow and thrive into a completely separate plant. Often times they will be carried in fruits because then animals spread them much farther than if they just fell below the original parent plant.

Blog Post #7 - Duaa Khan

Rutaceae are all around the world and mainly are fruit trees. Rutaceae are defined as plants that have flowers and produce seeds. Grapefruit plants are just one species of the 2,070 species classified as Rutaceae. Rutaceae are unique because of the way they reproduce. There are both male and female parts, the male part is called the stamen, and the female part is called the carpel/pistil wich make up the reproductive parts of the broccoli flower. The pistil includes the stigma, style, and ovary. The stigma is where pollen germinates, the style supports the stigma and allows pollen to travel to the ovary, and the ovary contains ovules that can be fertilized to create an embryo. The stamen includes anthers and filaments. Anthers create pollen, and filaments support the anthers. Though nonsexual, petals are also an important part of flowers. Petals function as an attraction for pollinators. Pollinators include bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies. In cross pollination, pollinators transfer pollen from one plant to another. This process is called pollination. Pollen contains male sex cells, also known as gametes which are haploid cells. The pollen lands on the stigma and goes to the ovary by creating a tube in the style. In the ovary, ovules can join with a sperm cell (pollen) to become fertilized. This creates a diploid cell known as an embryo (seed). The ovary then becomes the fruit. This process is known as fertilization.

This is an image of a flower from our broccoli plant. As you can, most of the reproductive parts are visible, even without magnification. You can easily see the anthers, stigma, and the style. The petals are also visible, which help attract pollinators as well as protect the reproductive parts. 

Along with the bright yellow petals, you can clearly see the 6 anthers that are part of the stamen. The stigma and style, which are part of the pistil, are also visible. 

This image shows 6 stamen and a single pistil, but we will only focus on the stamen for now. The stamen is the male reproductive anatomy of angiosperms. It is fairly simple and only has two parts: the filament and the anther. The filament is a slender stalk that supports the anther. The anther is the more important male part. This oval-shaped structure on the end of the filament is where the male gametophyte, known as pollen, is produced.

The photo shows part of the pistil, or female reproductive anatomy, of our broccoli flower. The pistil consists of three parts: stigma, style, and ovary. The ovary is at the base and supports a long, tube-like style. At the end of the style is the stigma, a sticky surface for pollen to land on. This image focuses only on the stigma and style. As the pollen grain germinates on the stigma, it creates a pollen tube through the entire length of the style. The pollen tube grows out of the pollen grain and creates a tunnel from the stigma to the ovary. 

Here you can see the flower with nearly all of its parts stripped away. The stigma and style are still present, but the main focus of the image is on the ovary. The ovary is the larger, base portion of the pistil. The ovary contains many ovules (eggs) which develop into seeds once they are fertilized. With the ovary sliced open, you can see some of the ovules inside, but there is also a more clear one located slightly to the left of the pistil.

Blog Post #6 - Audrey Malone

     Our plant in the garden was initially growing and I had hope, but now it seems as though the broccoli plant sadly did not make it. Although other weeds and other plants have begun to grow throughout the garden and have greatly increased in biomass. The growth of the other plants is due to photosynthesis and the other plants cells dividing inside the plants allowing the garden to flourish. You can tell that the plants are receiving sunlight because they are growing using photosynthesis . During the process of photosynthesis the energy given from the sun is used to to convert carbon dioxide and water into a simple sugar, glucose. The process of photosynthesis begins as previously stated with the sun hitting the chlorophyll and as the leaves capture the sunlight. It's soon stored after in the covalent bonds of carbohydrate molecules. Later, the energy in the covalent bonds will be broken down in cellular respiration. Overall, photosynthesis is a multi step process that only needs sunlight, CO2, and water. You can also tell the plants are using cellular respiration because they are taking in the CO2 from the air and converting it into energy that is being used to grow all of the plants in the garden. Cellular respiration is the process in which energy is extracted to make ATP. ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate, it's a complicated organic chemical that provides energy. In the first stage of cellular respiration glucose is broken down in the cytoplasm of the cell. In stage 2 of cellular respiration pyruvate molecules are transported into the mitochondria of the cell. Therefore, moving on to the Krebs cycle. After, the Krebs cycle stage three occurs in which the energy in the energy carriers goes to an electron transport chain. While this step is happening ATP is being made.
    The enzymes Phosphoglycerate kinase and ribulose would be made when the plants RNA polymerase would become split and undoes the DNA because it would be using the process known as transcription and translation to make those proteins. As the RNA is copied it then gets sent through the messenger RNA or mRNA. After it would go to the tRNA which job is to transfer an amino acid to the correct codon. Lastly, when the tRNA reaches a stop codon it gets sent out as a competed protein. Proteins are fairly large (for a cell) complex molecules that are very important to the body in a plant or human. Proteins take on multiple important jobs they do almost all of the work in cells, and are required for structure and function in cells.

Blog Post #6 -Elena

1. How is your plant (or any plants in our garden, for that matter) getting bigger and adding biomass? Your explanation should correctly use the terms and concepts of cell division (mitosis), photosynthesis, and cellular respiration

Our plant is slowly adding biomass but it’s growth has stunted recently, most likely due to animals and insects. Other plants in the garden though, the weeds are growing very fast in biomass and have managed to take up most of the garden. This shows that the plants’s cells are dividing so that they are able to grow, they are also doing photosynthesis to get the nutrients they need to grow, the plants must also be doing cellular respiration because the plants are releasing oxygen and taking carbon dioxide in for photosynthesis and cellular respiration. 
During photosynthesis the plants are doing a chemical process that takes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and turns it into sugars that the plants cells can use for energy. Photosynthesis happens is when carbon dioxide enters the leaf through the stomata by diffusion. The water that is absorbed from the soil by the roots. The sunlight absorbed in the. Chlorophyll absorbs light energy, which is used to do photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a process driven by energy, glucose molecules or other sugars, are constructed from water and carbon dioxide. The byproduct in the process is oxygen. 
Cellular respiration is basically the opposite of photosynthesis. The first step of cellular respiration is Glycolysis, where glucose undergoes chemical transformations, and in the end glucose gets converted into two molecules of pyruvate . In these reactions ATP is made, and NAD+ is converted into NADH. The second step of cellular respiration is Pyruvate oxidation, where each pyruvate goes into the mitochondrial matrix and is converted into a CoA. And Carbon Dioxide is released and NADPH is generated. The third step of cellular respiration the Citric acid cycle, where the acetyl CoA combines with a four carbon molecule and goes through a cycle of reactions, regenerating the four carbon starting molecule. ATP, NADH, and FADH2 is producaed, and carbon dioxide is released. The final step of cellular respiration is Oxidative phosphoryation, where the NADH and FADH2  deposits their electrons in the ecetron transport chain turning back into NAD+ and FAD. As the electrons are moving up the chan energy is beig released and used to pump protons to form a gradient. The protons then flow back into the matrix and through an enzyme called ATP synthase, making ATP. At the end of the transport chain oxygen takes the electrons and takes up protons to form water. 
Cell division is happening to create new cells. Cells in the plant go throught the stages of Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase, and Cytokenisis to duplicate.  In prophase the chromosomes get thicker and visable, and the nucleus dissapears. In Metaphase the chromosomes line up in the middle and the spindles grab ahold of the chromosomes. Anaphase is when the spindles help the chromosomes separate in half and move to opposite sides of the cell. Then in telophase the chomosomes have made it to the opposite sides of the cell and a nucleus has formed around the setts of chromosomes, and the cell starts to split in half. Finally in Cytokinesis, the cell splits in half, and the end relust is two new identical cells. 

1. Phosphoglycerate kinase (PKG) and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) are two important enzymes used in photosynthesis. Describe how plants in the garden would make enzymes like these if a signal was sent to the nucleus to produce more of one of them. (Hint: enzymes belong to which category of biomolecule?)

Plants in the garden would make these enzymes when a RNA polymerase comes and undoes part of a DNA strand coping and transcribing it with RNA pairing bases to make a strand of RNA. Then after the DNA in put back together that new copied strip of RNA is taken to the ribosomes in the plant cell and there it is translated into amino acids which then build up into a protein or enzyme. 

Blog Post # 6 - Alia Latimer

Our plant itself, has either died, or lagged far behind the growth of it's surroundings. To be frank, I can't tell anymore. The plants in it's surroundings that we have come to know as weeds on the other hand are gaining biomass at a fast rate. They are very obviously in the ideal temperature, and getting the needed amount of resources to keep healthy. I can only imagine that although that change may seem effortless, thousands of millions of cells are hard at work to achieve this outcome. The cells are tirelessly replicating DNA and starting mitosis, over and over and over again. Through the five stages of cell division the DNA is unzipped , replicated, lined up, separated by the spindles, and a layer between the two sides takes form before finally separating. Any mistake during prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, or cytokeinis could lead to the end of both the original cell and the one being made. This is a delicate and stressful process not unlike many of the other processes that the plant cells undergo. Under the sun the plant preforms photosynthesis to make sugars that feed into cellular respiration. The sunlight's energy is recepted in the thylakoids of the cloroplast, where it is used to create sugars and oxygen. Those sugars and oxygen in return are used in the mitocondria to produce energy , water, and carbon dioxide. Both the endless cycle repeated many times just to grow maybe a centimeter over the course of a week.
No doubt that on an even smaller level the plant is sending signals through out it's stock to make proteins, triggering the process of transcription as the DNA is unzipped and copied into RNA, then brought through the cytoplasm to the nucleus where the ribosomes and Ribosomal RNA await to use the trascript to assemble the series of amino acids. All the cells have the same genes, but the RNA of each cell only reads a small portion, in order to produce the different desired traits. RNA is really responsible for the bulk of the process of protein creation since it is the Messenger RNA that actually holds the transcript of the DNA, the transfer RNA that brings the messenger RNA to the ribosome, and the Ribosomal RNA that is responsible for using the transcript to assemble the series of amino acids that make up the protein. Like marionettes, pulled into the dance of a puppet master that never tires, they transcribe and translate, replicate and divide, just going and going until their gone. Tossed to the wind and replaced by one of it's copies, a disposable piece in the process of growth.