Investigating The Use of Pectinase

The first 200 words of this essay...

Investigating the use of pectinase in the

Production of fruit juice.

Introduction/Background Information

Enzymes are proteins, which act as the acceleration devices of biochemistry. This means that they are used to catalyze (speed up) reactions. Enzymes are specifically designed for a target substrate, according to their size, shape and chemical charges that precisely bond to its substrate molecule. The section of the enzyme that binds to the substrate is called the active site and an advantage of enzymes being so specific is that they will not interact with or disturb other components present during the reaction. The diagram shows the reaction between pectinase and pectin and also how they are specific to each other.

The enzyme that I will be using during my investigation is pectinase, which is the specific enzyme used in the breakdown of pectin, a polysaccharide substrate found in the cell walls of many plants.

In plants the pectin naturally functions as a glue to hold the cell wall together. Pectins are large polysaccharide molecules, similar to starch except that the repeating unit (residue) of pectin is galacturonic acid instead of the glucose in starch. Moreover, pectins are