Career Investigation Research on Dr. Devinder Sandhu
By Simran Sandhu
Dr. Sandhu has three parts to his job; teaching, scholarship, and service. Below I have researched
that courses that he teaches and his research projects for a better understanding of his job.
*Headings are highlighted in green.
*Vocabulary is highlighted in yellow.
Courses (Teaching)
Plant Biology
Plant Biology is the study of plant organisms and populations. (These include the mosses, ferns,
conifers, and flowering plants.) It is a branch of biology which involves the study of plant life. It
is also the study of a plant’s cellular components and molecular mechanisms. It also includes the
economic importance, growth, physiology, and ecology of plants. Plant Biology is also known
as Botany- the science of plants.
Plants serve many ecologic services. They are sources of fabric, food, shelter, and medicine.
They make oxygen and organic nitrogen. They also control the atmospheric temperature. They
provide essential mineral nutrients. Plants simply serve the needs of other living organisms like
humans by being simply living.
Genetics
Genetics is a branch of biology that deals with the variation of organisms, heredity, and genes.
You can see that a child resembles his or her parents in many ways, such as hair color, height,
and eye color. Genetics describes similarities such as these, and differences of any sort such as
how no organism from the same species is a carbon copy of each other (with an exception of
identical twins or triplets).
History of Genetics- Gregor Mendel is known as the father of genetics. In 1857, he began to
experiment with pea plants he grew in his garden. He figured out that if you self pollinate short
plants you get more short plants and if you self pollinate tall plants, you get more tall plants. He
slowly figured out that if you breed tall plants and short plants, that the tall is dominant over the
short. The first generation, all of his plants were tall. But in the second generation, there was a
mix of tall and short plants. Mendel studied other traits such as the color of the pea plants and
discovered the natural laws of heredity which are now known as the Mendelian Laws. Gregor
Mendel tried to get his work published in a scientific journal with the help of the most famous
botanist in Europe (Karl Wilhelm von Nageli). He failed to get the botanist support, because he
was just a monk that wasn’t even qualified enough to teach high school. He got his work
published in a journal some years later, but nobody listened to him. He died in 1884. His work
was rediscovered later by three different scientists and proved to be true.
Plant Genetics
Plant genetics is branch of biology that deals with the variation of organisms, heredity, and genes
in plants. Plant genetics covers genetic analysis and understanding key processes in plants
uncovered through genetics. For example, a purple flower is purple because it has a gene which
is responsible for making a purple pigment, which causes the flower to be purple.
Plant Breeding
Plant breeding is changing the genetic makeup of a plant so that it benefits mankind. When you
breed a plant with a different plant, you cross a male reproductive part of a plant and a female
reproductive part of the other plant to create a hybrid. Some of the most common genetically
modified crops are: soybeans, corn, sweet corn, cotton, tomatoes, and potatoes.
This is a picture of the parts of a flower. The male reproductive part is the stamen, while the
female reproductive part is the pistil.
An example of breeding one plant with another would be if you bred a tall pea plant with a short
pea plant. The tall pea plant would have two dominant alleles, while the short pea plant would
have two recessive (the one which does not show up) alleles. The results would be 4 tall plants.
All of them would have one dominant allele for tall, and one recessive allele for short. Then if
you bred all of these, you would end with 3 tall plants and 1 short plant.
TT and tt
Tt Tt Tt Tt
T
t
TT Tt Tt tt
T
t
TT
Tt
Tt
tt
You get these results because when you breed the first two plants, the dominant trait over rides
the recessive trait, making all of the next plants tall, and then when you breed those 4 plants, you
get a 3:1 ratio.
Research Projects (Scholarships)
Identification of Alternate Dwarfing System in Wheat
This project is about replacing the genes which are involved in the synthesis of gibberellins (GA)
in wheat. Before the 1960s, wheat was 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. This is called lodging. 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.
The ear at the top of the wheat.
The wheat grains.
The Genes Involved in the Reproduction of Soybean
Reproduction is a very important process in all organisms. 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.
Vocabulary:
Biology- The study of life and of living organisms.
Cellular Components- Stuff that are in the cell, such as a nucleus.
Molecular Mechanisms- Methods that are involved with making DNA or other molecules.
Heredity- To inherit characteristics from our relatives/parents.
Genes- A unit of heredity.
Breed- To make new and improved types of an animal or plant.
Genetic Analysis- Analysis of a particular cross, etc.
Alleles- Pairs/series of genes on a chromosome. They determine heredity characteristics.
Synthesis- To make something.
Yields- Production per unit area.
Resources:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/
http://www.bionewsonline.com/a/what_is_genetics.htm good one
The Simple Homeschool Plant Biology Resourceshttp://www.the-simple-homeschool.com/plant-biology.html
Heredity and Geneticshttp://www.cccoe.net/genetics/heredity.html
Mendel: The Father of Geneticshttp://library.thinkquest.org/19037/idfog.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding
http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/genetically-modified-crops.html
http://plantbiology.stanford.edu/courses.html#plant_genetics
image resources:
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/html_pubs/PLBREED/pl_breed.html
http://www.indian-commodity.com/commodities/wheat/
http://microsour.com/wheat_history.html