Sixth Week of Lecture of BSM3101 with Dr. Parames

After having a mid-sem break for the whole 5th week, we learned about totipotency and embryology. Totipotency is the ability of  a individual plant cell/tissue/organ to regenerate into a whole plant under right condition.




Then, we learned about pollination of flowering plants. It was very interesting because after pollination, we learned about zygotic embryogenesis that is very unique. Embryogenesis is the process that produces a plant embryo from a fertilised ovule by asymmetric cell division and the differentiation of undifferentiated cells into tissues and organs.

I am very interested in doing some tissue cultures by using those techniques of somatic and zygotic embryogenesis.

Fourth Week of Lecture of BSM3101 with Dr. Parames

This week, Dr. Parames Taught us about the theory that I really like, "The Endosymbiosis Theory". This Theory is actually very unique because of the engulfing of several cells such as aerobic heterotrophic prokaryotes and photosynthetic prokaryotes to produce an early eukaryotic cell. Dr. Parames also showed a video by Mc-Graw Hill about this theory.

The Endosymbiosis Theory Video


We did some activities such as a Venn's Diagram of the relationships between mitochondria and chloroplast. It was a group work. We also need to find the ancestor of mitochondria and chloroplast. It was really fun to do these activities in our group because my group members are really creative and cooperative.
This week, we also learn about the division cycle of plant cells. As usual, Dr. Parames taught us about mitosis and meiosis. She stress on something that is new to us, the Cyclin-dependant Kinase (CDKs). It is important that it activates Cyclin in promoting cell to proceed to another phase.

Seventh Week of Lecture of BSM3101 with Dr. Parames

This week, is our last week with Dr. Parames for this semester. We discussed about plant hormones on Tuesday (31st October). We actually have learned about it in our secondary school and foundation year, but in this course, we studied even deeper for the plant hormones topic.

Firstly, we are introduced with the "Signal Transduction Pathway in Plants" as it is the fundamental of plant hormones mechanism. It consists of three pathway, that are "Reception", "Signal transduction" and "Response". The hormones will bind to a receptor (e.g. phytochrome receptor protein, phototropin receptor protein) and becomes activated. Transduction pathway is a series of relay proteins/enzymes that pass a signal until it reaches the machinery of the cell. Response is the result of the transduction pathway. It is most often a change in gene expression or a cellular process affects plant growth and development.

There are 5 types of plants hormones:-

• Auxin
• Gibberellic acid
• Cytokinin
• Abscisic acid
• Ethylene

I was enlightened to study about all of this signals in plants. Auxin is not just inducing growth of the plants by promoting cell elongation, but it also help in delaying fruit ripening. It was something new for me because I had never know about it.

On Thursday (2nd November), Dr. Parames discussed about our Test 1 questions. She was a bit disappointed because there are some students that failed in their test even though the questions given to us are not that tough.

 Thank you Dr. Parames for teaching us for 7 weeks in this semester ! See you next year !