An experiment to show the lowest concentration of copper (II) sulphate solution needed to bring about full denaturation of egg albumen.

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An experiment to show the lowest concentration of copper (II) sulphate solution needed to bring about full denaturation of egg albumen

Introduction

Egg albumen is a complicated protein that is more commonly know as egg white.  This protein becomes denatured when copper (II) sulphate is added at a certain concentration.  This is because the cations from the copper ions react with the amino acids carboxylate anions which form peptide bonds. This in turn affects the secondary structure of the egg albumen since there is a disruption in the peptide bonds and the protein reforms as a fibrous protein precipitating out of the solution and becoming opaque, the copper ions also react with the hydrogen in the amine group causing the primary structure to fail also. Another reason for the opaqueness is that the positive copper ions change the polarity of the albumen; this increases its insolubility and causes it to precipitate out of the solution.

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List of apparatus

Colorimeter        I have chosen this method of measuring the opaqueness of the egg albumen because it is a lot more accurate than eye and will give me figures that I can use in graphs, tables or charts.

Distilled water        this is use rather than tap water because it contains less impurities that could affect the experiment (e.g. copper ions from copper pipes.) results. It can also be used to clean other apparatus.

Egg albumen        this is needed to perform the experiment

  1. mol dm-3 copper

(II) Sulphate solution        I will use this to ...

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