How does your garden grow? -Maya Lewis

1. Our Kohlrabi plant is getting bigger and adding biomass by having its cells divide through a process called mitosis, and to do this the plant needs to collect sugar to convert into energy. To collect sugar the plant performs photosynthesis which converts water, from the soil, and carbon dioxide, from the air, into oxygen and sugar called glucose. This sugar is important for cellular respiration. Cellular respiration is the process in which a cell uses oxygen to convert glucose, a simple sugar, into the energy-carrying molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). After this, the plant then able to move the sugars to the cells so that the plant can perform mitosis and grow.

2.To perform photosynthesis plants needs the enzymes phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). When the cell tells the nucleus to produce more of these enzymes it will have RNAsynthase go to the part of the cell chromosome that contains the gene coding for the protein. It will then spilt the DNA so it can copy the information and make mRNA. This happens by a process of complimenting base pairs. Then it sends the mRNA to ribosomes to create proteins. It reads the gene in sets of 3 base pairs known as codons which then codes what amino acids are going to be added to the polypeptides in the order that is read. After a certain point, one of the codons will tell the ribosome that the protein is complete so it will release the codon and the mRNA, thus completing the process of making an enzyme.