Hello everyone!

We are aware of some technical issues with the platform, leading to an issue with posting to project pages and issues with users' dashboards. We are working diligently with our developer to resolve them as quickly as possible. Please be patient and keep checking your projects so you can post your hellos, updates, reports, thank-yous, and goodbyes.

Hi Lion Team,

Awesome job analyzing this project even though the results were somewhat confusing! Trevor emphasized that the Punnett square only shows a possible outcome, and this is right, random chance could have contributed to the abundance of non-purple plants in your experiment. Usually as you increase the number of your replicates, i.e. grow more plants, random chance will smooth out and you should see the expected ratio (which is why the school-wide data was probably closer to the expected ratio), but with a small number of plants, randomness will be a stronger factor.

However, there is another possible explanation for what you observed. Genes encoded in DNA are like instructions for organisms, but they still need to be read and carried out (expressed). It may be that you had the expected ratio of purple to non-purple plants, but the plants weren’t in the right environment to express the purple gene. Joe pointed out that he saw the leaves and stem change color with changing temperature. This is a great observation, and would be a good basis for a follow-up experiment to see if changing the temperature of your plants increases the amount of purple or light green plants observed.

Good luck with the rest of the school year!

Lauren

Hi all,

Sorry for such a late message. I just wanted to say thank you to the mentors of this project. I had a good time learning and talking over the project with you guys. I thought this was a fun project, and I hope all you guys did too!I learned a lot about plants and what affects them the most. I hope you guys all have a great rest of your year. But on behave of the Lion team, Thank you all for your help!

Sincerely,

Lion Team 

Looks like you are in the final stages of your projects.

It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.

You have until Tuesday, April 25, 2021, for final posts to be added, so please be sure to thank your fellow teammates soon!

4. Based off of… A. your group results, B. your class results, C. 9th grade CM Biology results, did we see this pattern of traits be expressed? Check the Mustard Seed Master Class Data sheet for this information and use it as evidence in your claims below.

Which level of the population (A, B, and/or C) showed the 9:3:3:1 phenotypic ratio? If your results varied from this ratio, please explain how that could occur with 3 claims. (15 points)

Level C showed the 9:3:3:1, but A and B didn’t. This might have occurred because maybe the plant didn’t have enough water, or the temperature of the classroom.

5. Please choose ONE of the continuous traits you measured and create a graph. You may choose to graph the using data exclusively from your group dataset, your class data, or the entire CM Biology growth data. Any data we collected from the Mustard experiment will be available to you in a downloadable excel file. Bonus points below will be applied to a missing or low grade from Q3.

       1.  Your Group Data (15points)

1. Your Class Data (1.5x points=22.5points)
2. The 9^th grade Biology Mustard Data (2xpts=30points)

What trait did you graph? Please paste it below from the excel file.

I did my graph on my group’s plants height.

What is your x-axis? What is your y-axis?

My x-axis is the plant ID#. The y-axis is the height of the plants.

6. Please read Concept #1 and 2 other concepts from the list below. In claim-evidence-reasoning fashion, tell me why these concepts are true using the collected data from your mustard experiment, feedback from your mentors, and connections to genetics and evolution we have discussed together. (14 points)

Concepts:

1. An organism exists as an expression of its inherited genes interacting in an environmental context (Phenotype = Genotype X Environment). 

2. Inheritance of genes occurs via the life cycle of an organism through successful reproduction of offspring. 

3. Plants are living, reproducing organisms that live in and are influenced by the environment. 

4. Plants vary in their phenotypes (traits), and we can observe, measure and analyze this variation by studying populations of plants. 

5.  Science is an active process of inquiry, investigation, and communication.

This is true because I saw that the leaves and stems change color with different temperatures. 

1. The plants traits changed over time because they grew taller. They also grew more leaves and seed pods.

2. The possible explanation for our results could be that the bigger plants could have had more sunlight and water.

3. The data we collected supports my claim because we collected a lot of data that shows that the plants got taller and started to grow leaves and seed pods. The data shows the plants starting off slow and then gaining height quickly.

4. We could let them keep growing and see where they lead.

2. For our plants we got mostly green stems even though that was recessive. I think that most of the seeds were recessive then, because there were only a few purple stems.

4:Some future experiments that could be done to expand on the results is more control plants. If we have more control plants the better the comparison is. The more data the better. If we have more data to compare to each other the more we can decipher if the environments plays as big of a role as we think. If we add more plants then we give groups more members. By doing this we will have more data and it won't be as much work considering the amount of group members 

1)One claim that we can make from our experiments is that the environment affects the plants more than genetics. The whole project, we worked on the question, "What affects a plant more, its environment or genes?"In this case our environment. After many tedious weeks of research, we did research on the growth and color of our plants. In our exam we looked at a Punnet square, that showed a higher chance of getting a 9:3:3:1 chance of purple stems and green leaves. But in our experiment we saw that this was not the case of the offspring. Most of the offspring was green leaves (recessive phenotype) and not the dominant phenotype purple leaves. This means that the parents alleles gave off most of their recessive alleles. But in the Punnet square it was predicted we would get more purple stem plants. Since the parents dominant traits(the more likely outcome) did not show up we know that there genetics were not as well presented in their offspring. Then we get to the environment part when we see that the plants are highly affected. This key question mainly comes down to what does more. They both may affect the outcome of the plant ,but the environments molds the plant into how it is behaviorally, and physically. After researching we see that the plants become brown and shriveled. This is because in our plants we tested to see if more fertilizer helped the plant. So we had three plants one with a normal amount of fertilizer, and then the other to either 2 times and then 3 times. We found out that the environment in the 2x and 3x plants looked a lot different than the normal amount fertilizer plant. In the experiment plants they were either brown and shriveled (maybe even dead) and then in the control it was mostly healthy. Based off this data in the long term of things the environment played a big role on how the plants looked after a while. Just because the parents give off their genes, docent mean that affects the way they live the rest of their life. Since the environment is long term, and the genes are just how you appear at first we can conclude that the enviorment plays a larger role in the outcome of the plants.