Blog post #10

1. a plant that has flowers and produces seeds enclosed within a carpel. The angiosperms are a large group and include herbaceous plants, shrubs, grasses, and most trees. 

   

   The yellow thing that seem or looks like it’s cut open is called an anther which is where the meiosis takes place producing male gametophytes.

   

   This is a picture of the stigma and the carpel. The very top is called the stigma, where pollen lands and the carpel also know as pistil what produce female gametophytes.

   

   This is a picture of of the inside of an ovary and the clear, water drip look things are ovules.
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Anthers and Stigmas and Styles, Oh My! -Sayra

Anthers and Stigmas and Styles, Oh My!

To begin, fertilization is when the female gamete is in the process of fusion which can be the ovum or egg and then the male gamete made in the pollen tube by the pollen grain. Everything starts of with the pollen and seed cones. The pollen cones are for the males while the seed cones are for the females. Pollen grains are made from the pollen cones. For the female, the seed cones, there are thousands of cells to be found. Pollen goes into the stigma and starts to germinate in order for the sperm to reach the egg. After the tube grows, it reaches the ovule. Lastly, double fertilization occurs and then everything is complete.

This shows the picture of the flower before the petals were taken off in order to dissect it.

The stem looking part is called the filament while the top yellow tips that are at the end of the stalk are called the anthers.

Here we see the carpel with the pointy top called the stigma and that is where the pollen grains get stuck.

This shows the ovary which has one or more ovules where the gametophytes are produced.

Anthers and Stigmas and Styles, Oh My!- Jenny

       How do flowering plants reproduce? Flowering plants reproduce in a similar yet different way to how humans reproduce.

This is a picture of the flower before we dissected it. The full flower was far to large to fit into the small screen of the microscope.

This is the stamen, the male reproductive anatomy of the flower. Specifically the anther and filament. The anther is the yellow curled part near the left of the picture. This is the oval sac where meiosis takes place. During meiosis, haploid male gametophytes are produced- pollen grains (pollen). This part of the flower also releases the pollen grains. The filament is the green stem-like things near the right of the picture. This part of the flower supports the anthers.

This is part of the carpel. The bottom-most shape in the picture is called the stigma. The stigma is where pollen grains frequently land. The pollen adheres to the stigma, meaning it gets stuck to this part of the flower. The stalk of the stigma is called the style.

The left-most part of the picture is the ovary. It is part of the carpel. The ovary contains and produces the female reproductive cells. The ovary also contains the ovule. The ovule stores and carries the female reproductive cells.

The little brown organism on the top-most stalk is an aphid. I found him exploring the flower and decided to take a closer look at him.

The pictures at the top and left are "Fred," our aphid. Fred and the other aphids are insects that suck the juices from plants. Aphids can cause damage to plants because they can transfer diseases into them. So far, this little aphid has not done much, but when there are hundreds of these little insects on one plant, then the plant will start to suffer.














       This is the anatomy of the broccoli flower, and now you will learn how flowering plants like these reproduce.
       A flowering plant is often referred to as an angiosperm. The life-cycle of angiosperms begins once flowers are produced. Every flower contains the anthers and the ovary (as seen in the above pictures), and inside the anthers is where each cell undergoes meiosis. The result of meiosis is four haploid cells. Each cell will become a pollen grain. The pollen grains' nucleus will undergo a mitotic division that will result in two haploid nuclei. Once the pollen grain stops growing, it is released from the anther and is put on a stigma.
       The ovule is where the female gametophyte develops. When a single diploid cell undergoes meiosis, it results in four haploid cells. After this occurs, three of those cells will disintegrate. That one remaining cell will go through mitosis to produce eight nuclei. The embryo sac is then produced, by using the eight nuclei and the surrounding membrane. The embryo sac is the female gametophyte of an angiosperm. One of the eight nuclei that is near the base of the gametophyte, is the egg nucleus. The egg nucleus is the female gamete, and when fertilization occurs, this cell will become the zygote that grows into a new beautiful plant.

Matter of selection- Jacob

1. Which part (anatomy) or characteristic of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to exhibit the most variation (greatest number of different forms)? Kales, cabbages, and Tronchuda cabbages are widely grown in northwestern and some of the forms.
2. Which part or characteristic of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to show the greatest range of variation (biggest difference between one extreme and its opposite)? The sporting part, has the most variations.
3. Using the terms that follow, explain why you think there is so much variability in the domestic forms of Brassica oleracea: traits, selective breeding, artificial selection, genes, descent with modification, natural variations, mutations Traits could be: purple or green outer leaves,  Six main vegetables have been derived from this wild stock through selection,  It has been bred into a wide range of cultivars, including cabbage, broccoli, etc., genes are depending on the plants parents genes, descent with modification can be associated with cabbage, mutations can include: Low linolenic acid; Brassica oleracea; fatty acid desaturase 3 (FAD3)
4. Which part (anatomy) of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to be most consistently the same in all of the examples in our garden, regardless of how extreme the differences between other parts of the same plants may be? Why do think this is so? I haven’t really look at the garden.
5. What would plant breeders have to do in order to get the body part or characteristic you described above (in your response to question #3) to become much different than it is presently? Traits could be: purple or green outer leaves

A Matter of Selection- Sayra

     The leaves are what show the most variation in the brassica oleracea family.  Even though the stems are pretty much similar, the shape and size of the leaves are what make it different.  Collard greens and Cauliflower have the same leaf shape and have a ration of about 20:22 and 11:14. Kale and cauliflower  are different because the kale's leaves are long and thin while the leaves of the cauliflower are wide and very curved. The leaves of Kale are 24cm long and 12cm wide.
     Artificial selection and selective breeding is when a person's natural curiosity makes them mix and match with a discovery of something like brassica oleracea. Different species were created by crossbreeding different plants to experiment. Modification occurs when organisms reproduce. This means that whenever a new generation is created the traits in the plants are mutated or adapted. Natural variations occur when plants mutate by themselves or die because of a new factor in its community.
     The plants have stems that are a purple and green color and also have large leaves. Some of its traits work and can adapt to the environment so there is no point of changing the color. Cauliflower and kohlrabi have yellow blossoms. Those are what attract bees and bugs are responsible for pollinating them. Since that works, no change is needed for the plant.
     If changing a characteristic is needed, plant breeders would need to find plants with the trait they want and breed it with other plants. A problem would be if the trait didn't yet exist, the plants would have to be genetically modified in order to be given the genes they want.

A Matter of Selection- Jenny

       All of the Brassica Oleracea plants in the WGHS GOLD Main Garden are different. The topic that I decided to focus on was leaf shape. After studying all the plants, I could see a variation between many of the plants that live there.
       The characteristics that are most similar between these plants are the leaf color and leaf shape. They all have a greenish quality to leaves and all have similar qualities in shape. The characteristic that are different are the shape of the plant. Each plant has a different shape to it and some are bigger than others.

 The plant to the left has oval shaped leaves. These leaves have curled edges and are a forest green color. These are simple leaves, which means that the plant only has one leaf per stem. The leaves are corrugated, and wrinkly as well.

This plant is very different yet very similar to the plant above.  These leaves (instead of being all green) are tinted with purple and green. These leaves could be considered Caerulescent, meaning that they are blue tinted.

These leaves are very different from the other leaves. These leaves are also wrinkly, but they have lots of frills. Each individual leaf has lots of parts coming out. It has a greenish purplish color, and has purple roots.

These leaves are a fuscous color. This means that it has a grayish blue color. These leaves are bumpy and narrow. The stems of this plants are a citreous color, meaning that it is yellowish. The leaves have a very bumpy texture, and are very different and similar to the platens above. 














       Because of the data collected above, you can tell that these plants are very alike and very different. This is because of many things. One of the things that changes these plants is adaptation. Adaptation is when an organism changes in order to survive in a certain environment. These plants might have also been artificially changed to be more desirable. Mutations will also affect these plants. Mutations are when the genes are changed and could result in a harmful or non-harmful way. 
       The characteristic that is the most similar is the color of the plants. All the plants have a similar color. The pictures below are all the plants in the garden. As you can see, all of the plants have a green color to them. Even though the color may be a different shade of green, they all have the same quality to them.

       In order for scientists to genetically modify the plants to get the color they want them to be, they have to breed a large population of plants. If you breed enough plants together, you will eventually end up with the desired traits that you were looking for. Because you have a large population and the right traits to breed, you can create the kind of plant or animal you want. 

GATTACA Essay- Jacob

Genetic engineering- The good and bad- you can pick out the attributes and traits of your son or daughter, but you’ll have to be rich or wealthy if you want you kid to have great genes. You can pick out their appearance , but you can’t control what they do nor their mood or attitude.

You can make your daughter or son perfect like great physical attractiveness, very intelligence, and one of the best athletic (athleticism), but it's depends on how much you invest in your child to make him or her better engineer person.

You can make your daughter or son 20/ 20 vision or blind, fast or slow, “smart” or not meeting the standard of social “smart” or in other word “normally amount”, more athleticism than the average person, etc.  You can pick the color of their hair, eyes, and body hair. But if you’re not rich nor wealthy you should just have a god’s child or an invalid. And take a chance on your genetics but they probably won’t be accept by many people.

Overall, the genetic engineering is probably not the best idea or thing to do. Like they say if it ain't broke, don't fix.