"How Does Your Garden Grow?"

1. Our brussel sprout plant has not grown significantly in size since last time our group checked our plants. Our plants have not grown in size due to a low accumulation of biomass through cell division, photosynthesis, and cellular respiration. The clearest explanation for our plants lack of biomass is mitosis better known as cell division. This process causes cells to split in two equal daughter cells, therefore replacing the dead or dying cells. When this process occurs at a rapid rate, the number of cells increase allowing the plants biomass to increase. In the case of our brussel sprouts, mitosis is not happening at a rapid rate. Photosynthesis also contributes to biomass do to excess glucose (sugar) being made which can later be converted to biomass. Again this is not taking place in our plant and if it is, there is not much biomass being created. One explanation for our plants lack of growth could be cellular respiration. In the case of cellular respiration, the process of photosynthesis is not converting and the excess glucose is being converted to ATP (energy) causing our plant to not increase its biomass.
2. When the nucleus in our brassica plants is put to work by producing more PEPC and Rubisco, which are enzymes, goes through a process called transcription. Transcription is a process in which strands of DNA code are converted to mRNA (messenger RNA). These messenger RNA are then given to the ribosomes. mRNA give instructions to the ribosomes which allows the construction of polypeptides (amino acid chains). Finally, by the production of the enzymatic proteins by processing and sorting will be done by the endoplasmic reticulum. For packaging and delivering, the proteins will foremost be sent to the Golgi apparatus.