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.