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Presentation Script (Rough Draft): SIMRAN MEGAN EMILY

INTRO- Today we will be discussing Dr. Sandhu's career, which includes the courses he teaches, as well as the different research projects he takes part in.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DR. SANDHU- Dr. Sandhu is an associate professor at UWSP. His career focuses on 3 main parts: teaching, scholarship, and service. The courses he teaches are Plant Biology, Genetics, Plant Genetics, and Plant Breeding. The scholarship portion of his job is focused on research projects.Two of those projects are: identification of the alternate dwarfing system in wheat and the genes involved in the reproduction of the soybean. Service involves the committees Dr. Sandhu is on as well as the different journals he reviews for. Some of the committees and journals are: The Academic Affairs Committee, the Grade Review Committee, the Student Centered Committee, the Journal of Heredity, Theoretical and Applied Genetics Journal, Molecular Breeding, Crop Science, Euphytica, and Phytopathology.

REVIEW OF COURSES- As you know from the video, Dr. Sandhu teaches courses on Plant Biology, Genetics, Plant Genetics and Plant Breeding. Plant Biology is the study of the life of plants. As you can see on the smartboard, plants start out as a seed and eventually grow into something taller and more useful. Also, there are certain parts in plants that are related to plant breeding, plant genetics and genetics. The plant must go through the process of pollination in order to reproduce. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anther to the stigma of a plant.For example in this picture you can see the life cycle of a plant and you can see the process of reproduction in the plant. Last night we briefly introduced Punnett Squares. A Punnett Square is used to figure out what percent chance there is a an organism having a certain trait. If you look at that Punnett Square you can see that the captial B stands for a purple flower and the lowecase b stands for a white flower. Also, note that the captital B is the dominant allele. //So, the way that a Punnett Square works is you draw a tic tac toe board like shape and you label one part male and one part female. Then you figure out what happens when you have to purple flower genes or a purple and a white gene, etc.// (//while saying this part draw Punnett square on whiteboard and ask the audience what they think will go in the spots).// Overall, the Punnett Square is a very important method to understand when studying genetics, plant genetics, and even plant breeding. Now, if you look up at the visualizer screen we will watch an interview with Dr. Sandhu regarding the research projects he takes part in.

INTERVIEW- //Script in Simran's notebook//

REVIEW OF RESEARCH PROJECTS AND EXTRA INFO NOT IN THE INTERVIEW-

In summary, the identification of the alternate dwarfing system in wheat is basically about replacing the genes which are involved in the synthesis of gibberellins (GA) in wheat. As you now know wheat used to be a tall plant. At the top of the plant, there is something called an ear which contains the wheat grains. Since the top of the plant was heavier than the bottom, whenever the wind blew, the wheat would fall over. A hormone called GA, which is involved in the height of wheat, was broken to reduce the amount of GA, which produced short plants. The problem is that that hormone controls more than just the height of the plant, so now the plant also has less wheat grains. This is why Dr. Sandhu is trying to find a gene which would make the wheat shorter, but still would also have more grains than the GA wheat. There are many genes involved in the reproduction of soybean. If anything happens to even one of these genes, then the plant will become sterile. Dr. Sandhu is trying to find out where these genes are on a chromosome, and what exactly they do to make the plant fertile. If he can find this, he can figure out how to make the male part of the plant sterile, and the female part of the plant fertile. This way, the plant can’t self fertilize, and will have to fertilize with a different plant, making hybrid seeds. This would be commercially very important, because it would help out farmers, letting them plant hybrid soybean, and increase soybean yields. Any further questions about the research projects?

SUMMARY- Now, hopefully you understand what a college science class is like and what you could be learning about. Also, if you really like science you could do research projects like Dr. Sandhu as well as write for journals and magazines. We hope that everyone has learned a lot about plant science and had a fun time during our presentation.

NOTES- During the presentation we will ask the audience questions to make sure they are engaged and paying attention, also we will show some example pictures or do human representations of certain processes in plants.

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