reprodcutive failure 200- 400- good fruits 400- 444 200- 100- COL 5064018 5090550 $100981 $107245 lines $111280 $128044 $130570 $145086 S064018 $100981 $107245 lines $111280 $128044 $130570 $145086 temp 16 24 temp 申 16 申 24
When dealing with crops, yield (or fruit count) is a good indicator of performance. A group of researchers looked fruit count in several genotypes of a crop species growing at different temperatures, 16C and 24C. Additionally, they also looked at the genotypes’ reproductive failure(fruits aborted/total). Their statistical analysis indicates that there are significant differences in fruit count between temperatures and that the line 11280 (sixth box starting from the left corner of the graph) is significantly different to the others. However, for reproductive failure there are no significant differences between temperatures but the line 11280 is still significantly different to the others. The line 11280 has silenced gene involved in the regulation of plant growth(regulates cell division), drought responses and freezing tolerance. Plants with this gene silenced have a smaller size. The graphs below show the direction of their findings:
1) Describe the general patterns observed in the graphs.
2) Why is fruit count a good indicator of fitness? Why is it also important to check reproductive
failure? (Hint: think if producing more fruits always mean that more fruits are viable – when
plants don ́t have enough energy they might produce fruits but these will not germinate).
3) Give an explanation for these results; why and how differences in temperature will influence
fruit count? Do plants have a higher fitness in one temperature vs the other? Explain why. Why
line 11280 behave differently? How can you explain that there are differences in number of fruits
but not in reproductive failure?
Figure 2: On the left, number of viable fruits (y-axis) of wild type (COL) and 8 mutant lines growing (x-axis) at 2 different
temperatures. On the right, reproductive failure (y-axis) of wild type (COL) and 8 mutant lines growing (x-axis) at 2 different
temperatures. In both graphs, red indicates 16C and blue 24C.
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