Arabidopsis Lab Report

This experiment was conducted show that different phenotypes present in the Arabidopsis plants are caused by epigenetic variations. Specifically, it is caused by whether the FWA gene, a gene that responsible for the flowering of the plant, is methylated or not (DNA Learning Center, “Detecting Epigenetic DNA Methylation”). The wild type ler plant is methylated on that gene while the mutant fwa-1 plant, however, is not methylated on that gene. Research has showed that methylation on the FWA gene is what causes this plant to flower on time. Physically, this can be supported because the wild type ler plant appears taller than the mutant plant. To carry out this experiment, both wild type and mutant plants were grown. After isolating their genomic

The wild type undigested sample was a sample of wild type DNA that did not include McrBC and was not at risk cut up, or digested, by that enzyme. This served as the control; a sample by which the digested samples could be compared to. The wild type digested sample, however, did include McrBC. The same principle applies for the mutant digested and undigested samples. It is known that the wild type plants contain methylated sites; therefore, it should not appear on the gel. The McrBC enzyme was expected to cut out the methylated sites, causing the PCR products not to appear on the gel. However, this was not the case. None of the PCR products were visible on the gel, meaning that one group must have erred and the results are no longer reliable. Fortunately, the instructor provided a sample picture with the correct information displayed on the gel. The picture accurately displays all of the bands except for the wild type digested band. This shows that the methylated sites were indeed cut out by the restriction enzyme. Therefore, the contrasting phenotypes are related to altering methylation, suggesting that genes with opposite effects are involved in the epigenetic regulation of