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Biologically Important Molecules Lab Report

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Biologically Important Molecules: Enzymes
Introduction
The purpose of this experiment is to determine how outside factors—pH, temperature, and incubation time—affect an enzyme’s ability to catalyze, or speed up, a chemical reaction and generate the maximum amount of product.
The incubation medium’s pH level, for example, may directly influence the binding of the substrate to the enzyme’s active site. This results from the correlation between pH and the ionization of the substrate and amino acid side chains at the binding site of the enzyme. Extreme pH levels may also distort, or even denature, the enzyme (Bender, 2016).
Temperature is another factor that may affect the amount of product. Heat provides energy for the reaction, thereby increasing …show more content…

The longer an enzyme incubates with its substrate, the more product is formed. However, if the incubation is too long, the enzyme will denature, thus decreasing the amount of product (Bender, 2016).
Therefore, I hypothesize that if an enzyme is to function at its highest capacity, then it must be found in its optimal levels of pH, temperature, and incubation time. This experiment will examine five different enzymes to try to determine these optimal conditions needed to generate the most product. It will test each independent variable—pH, temperature, and incubation time—for all five enzymes to determine the most favorable conditions for each to produce the greatest amount of catalytic …show more content…

Under these conditions, the enzyme generated 93.70 μmol of product.
Figure 5
Optimal Incubation Conditions for Enzyme 3 Figure 6
Table of Optimal Values for Enzyme 3 The optimal conditions for Enzyme 4 (shown by the tables in Figure 7 and Figure 8) are a pH range of 8.80 to 9.30, with a peak at 9.050; a temperature range of 30.0°C to 50.0°C, with a peak at 42.0°C; and an incubation time range of 50.0 minutes to 60.0 minutes, with a peak at 59.0 minutes. Under these conditions, the enzyme generated 101.090 μmol of product.
Figure 7
Optimal Incubation Conditions for Enzyme 4 Figure 8
Table of Optimal Values for Enzyme 4 The optimal conditions for Enzyme 5 (shown by the tables in Figure 9 and Figure 10) are a pH range of 2.20 to 2.80, with a peak at 2.680; a temperature range of 30.0°C to 50.0°C, with a peak at 38.0°C; and an incubation time range of 50.0 minutes to 60.0 minutes, with a peak at 60.0 minutes. Under these conditions, the enzyme generated 99.880 μmol of

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