TSOTS Assignment #6: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Now it's time to put some of your recently acquired science skills and knowledge into practice.

Your first step today should be to visit your plants in the garden. Try to find your group's plants. If you can't, don't worry--the most important thing to do is to notice the changes all of the plants have experienced. Snap a few pictures with your phone's (or other device's) camera and then return to the classroom. Briefly discuss your observations with your group and then proceed to answer the following questions in a post titled "How Does Your Garden Grow?".

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.
2. 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 of a leaf mesophyll cell to produce more of one of these enzymes. (Hint: enzymes belong to which category of biomolecule?)

Be sure to talk with your group members and other classmates about the questions as you attempt to compose your responses--together you should be able to come up with some very thoughtful explanations.



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