Alex A. Cardenas Week 2

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Methods

  • I sorted out all of the different possible colors.
  • Looked at amino acid sequences and how each color differed from another.
  • Spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the sequences differed and talked to my partner to see what he had sorted out.
  • Found allele sequences and put them in different orders, trying to see if different combinations of alleles would produce different colors.
    • Found out this didn't have any affect on color.

Results

(A) Allele | Color | AA Sequence (highlight differences)

  • Tyr Trp Arg Gln | Green | 10-11 Amino acids
  • Val Cys Arg Gln | White | 10-11 Amino acids
  • Tyr Phe Cys Arg Gln | Purple | 10-14 Amino acid
  • Phe Cys Arg Gln | Red | 10-11 Amino acid
  • Cys Arg Gln | Blue | 11-13 Amino acid
  • Trp Cys Arg Gln | Yellow | 10-13 Amino Acid


(B) The features of a protein that make it colored is the fact that it has aromatic compounds in it. It has alternating double and single bonds and it makes it able to absorb light at varying strengths, thus making the colors different.

(C) The features of the amino acid sequence that make a protein a particular color seems to occur somewhere around the 10th-12th amino acid in the sequence. For all of the colors, the last segment of the sequence varies in one or two amino acids.

(D) The colors combine via intermolecular bonds, hydrogen bonding, and clustering of side chains (hydrophobic/hydrophilic) that alters their color. This explains the genotype/phenotype rules found in part I because the new color contains different proteins, that when combined, for a new color along with new amino acid sequences.

(E) Proteins found in each of the four starting organisms:

  • Green-1: MSNRHILLVYWRQ
  • Green-2: MSNRHILLVYCRQ & MSNRHILLVWCRQ
  • Red: MSNRHILLVFCRQ
  • White: MSNRHILLVVCRQ

Scientific Conclusion

My main finding on today's project was that there were varying alleles which resulted in different plant colors. The main sequence of alleles was found between the 10-14 amino acids. Prior to this the amino acid sequence was the same for all colors, thus leading to the finding that these produced different colors. Other than this, the findings for this section were pretty limited. The time spent in class was used mainly for finding and switching around the amino acid sequences.

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