Biology Foundation - Effect of Temperature on the Action of an Enzyme As a method of investigating the effect of temperature on enzyme action, what are the shortcomings of this experiment?

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Biology Foundation - Effect of Temperature on the Action of an Enzyme

As a method of investigating the effect of temperature on enzyme action, what are the shortcomings of this experiment?

What could be done to improve it?

Suggest further experiments you might carry out to examine the effect of temperature on the inactivation of the enzyme.

Enzymes have a specific three-dimensional shape. They are large molecules, usually much bigger than their substrates, but only a relatively small part of the enzyme actually comes into contact with the substrate. This area of the enzyme is called its active site.

Each enzyme can catalyse only one particular reaction, because an enzyme can only react with a specific substrate molecule. In this case, Amylase can only catalyse the hydrolysis of starch into smaller disaccharide maltose molecules. This is because amylase can only react with starch molecules specifically in the way cellulase 'breaks down' cellulose specifically.

Heating the particles increases their energy and so they move about more quickly. This means there is a greater chance of collisions and the rate of reaction increases. Reactions need energy to start them off.

This energy is