An Investigation into the effect of substrate concentration on the activity of the enzyme catalase.

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An Investigation into the effect of substrate concentration on the activity of the enzyme catalase.

Introduction

This experiment is designed to examine how the concentration of the substrate (Hydrogen Peroxide) affects the rate of reaction of the enzyme catalase.

Catalase is a particular protein. All enzymes are globular proteins. Enzymes are essential for maintenance of life, because without them reactions occurring in living organisms would be so slow that they would hardly be worth occurring at all. It would be possible to increase the speed of reactions by simply increasing the temperature, but for the temperature to have a significant effect on the rate of reaction the temperature would have to be raised to a level that would kill the organisms by disrupting their membranes, as well as being expensive energetically. This is one of the main advantages of enzymes; they enable metabolic reactions to proceed rapidly while maintaining low temperatures.

Activation Energy

In many reactions, the substrate will not be converted to a product unless it is temporarily given some extra energy. This energy is called activation energy. Enzymes decrease the activation energy of the reaction, which they catalyse. They achieve this by