Nyeo2 Week 2

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Purpose

The purpose of this week's assignment is to simulate genetic crosses of flowers using Aipotu and to utilize interdisciplinary studies to better understand biological processes. The desired goal is to create a true-breeding purple flower from four wild plants of different colors.

Methods/Results

Part 1

  1. Opened Aipotu software and went to genetics tab.
  2. Performed self-crosses with each of the given flowers.(Green-1, Green-2, Red, and White)
  3. Crossed each of the given flowers with each other.
  4. Self-crossed the new colors that were created from the given flowers.(Blue, Yellow, Orange, Black, and Purple)
  5. Crossed each of the new colors from self-crossing the previous new colors with all of the colors created.
  6. Back crossed all combinations of flower colors to gain understanding of dominance.
  7. Found all associated alleles for the colors.
  8. Performed necessary experiments to create a purple flower from the alleles found.

Alleles

There were 5 different alleles found through crossing the flowers.

  • CG=green
  • CY=yellow
  • CB=blue
  • CR=red
  • CW=white

Starting Strains

  • Green-1 (CGCG)
  • Green-2 (CYCB, CGCW)
  • Red (CRCW, CRCR)
  • White (CWCW)

Green-1 self-cross Green-2 self-cross Red self-cross White self-cross

Resulting Strains

  • Blue (CBCB, CBCW)
  • Yellow (CYCY, CYCW)
  • Orange (CRCB)
  • Black (CRCY)
  • Purple (CRCB)

What we found was:

  • Green-1 self-crosses made green flowers
  • Green-2 was a combination of yellow and blue alleles
  • Red was a combination of red and white alleles
  • Orange resulted from crossing red and yellow
  • Black resulted from crossing green and red flowers
  • Blue self-crosses made only blue flowers
  • Yellow self-crosses made only yellow flowers
  • Red when crossed with green, yellow, or blue provides incomplete dominance in the offspring
  • Green is dominant over yellow and blue
  • Green is incompletely dominant with red only
  • Orange is red plus yellow with incomplete dominance
  • Black is green plus red with incomplete dominance
  • White is the most recessive allele
  • A purple flower can be made by crossing a red flower and a blue flower

We could not construct a pure-breeding purple flower using only the four starting strains because the creation of a purple requires a red and blue allele. There would need to be a mutation to the red flower in order to make it pure-breeding as well.

Part 2

  • Mutated red flower through Aipotu genetics tab.
  • Kept mutating until a different-colored flower appeared, it was purple.
  • In the biochemistry tab, the protein and DNA sequences of the mutant flower and the original pure-breeding flower were viewed and then compared for differences.

Protein Sequence

Mutated red flower turned purple

DNA Sequence

DNA sequence

From the screenshots displayed above, it is shown that there are five amino acids missing from the mutant flower and there are nucleotide differences in the DNA sequence at positions 60-66 and at position 101. It can be inferred that the amino acids missing play a major role in the production of red pigment, and that the nucleotide changes affected the expression of the genes for the amino acids.

Scientific Conclusion

In conclusion, it was not possible to create a pure-breeding purple flower from the four starting strains because the purple color was the result of incomplete dominance of the blue and red alleles. It was shown to be possible if the red strain was mutated so that it became pure-breeding. This mutation altered the DNA and protein sequence of the flower, which can be seen in Part 2 of the assignment.

Acknowledgements

  • My homework partners for the week were Sahil Patel, Maya Paniagua, and Jack Menzagopian
    • We worked on Part 1 together in class, trying different crosses and consulting each other about our ideas.
    • Maya did all of Part 2 and sent us her results. The pictures of the DNA and protein sequences were also taken from her page.
  • I looked at the tables on Jack's page to check that the alleles on my page were correct.
  • I used the syntax found on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images for my screenshots.
  • Except for what is noted above, this individual journal entry was completed by me and not copied from another source.

References

Nyeo2 (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2020 (PST)

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