Investigating the effect of substrate concentration on the activity of catalase enzyme.

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Investigating the effect of substrate concentration on the activity of catalase enzyme

Introduction

Catalase is a catalytic enzyme that speeds up cellular reactions within our body making it a biological enzyme. It is used to turn the potentially harmful effects of hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. In this experiment I will be testing the reactions of different concentrations of hydrogen peroxide with the enzyme, yeast.

Word and Chemical Equation:                                  

                                 Catalase

Hydrogen Peroxide                      Water+Oxygen

                       H  O                       H  O+O                                                                                              

Catalase works like a lock and key system when breaking down the hydrogen peroxide as shown and explained below.

Lock and key hypothesis

The factors that can effect enzyme activity are:

Concentration of Catalase- the higher the concentration of catalase the greater the chance the hydrogen peroxide has in colliding into the catalase molecules and reacting with them.

Concentration of hydrogen peroxide-the higher the concentration of hydrogen peroxide the greater chance there is in the catalase enzyme colliding into the hydrogen peroxide molecules and reacting with them.

PH-The active site of an enzyme can be changed by very acid or very alkaline conditions. When acid reacts with an enzyme it changes the shape of the active site making the “Lock and Key” theory hard to perform.

Temperature-particles have more kinetic energy when they are heated this means they have more energy to collide with other particles making them react quicker.

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Plan

The variable that I’m going to change is the concentration of hydrogen peroxide (H  O  ). I am using hydrogen peroxide because the concentration is easy to manipulate. There will be five concentrations of hydrogen peroxide that I will use: 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. The 100% of hydrogen peroxide is the equivalent of 16 vol.

        I will measure the rate of reaction by recording how much oxygen has replaced the water in a measuring cylinder after thirty seconds. I will be doing this for each of the different ...

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