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Enzyme Lab Report Essay

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In living organisms, chemical reactions are catalyzed with the help of molecules called enzymes. These molecules, which are proteins, all have a specific shape. This shape directly relates to the function of the enzyme. Enzyme’s fulfill their catalytic function by lowering a chemical reaction’s activation energy. They do this by binding to a substrate, the molecule(s) the enzyme will react with, at the enzyme’s active site. Once the enzyme and the substrate are bonded together, the enzyme helps change the molecule so that the formation and destruction of bonds in the molecule are able to occur more quickly (“Enzymes and the Active Site”). Without enzymes, many chemical processes that occur in the body would take too long. The three experiments discussed in this report will use the enzyme amylase. …show more content…

Much like the previous experiment, the effectiveness of the enzyme will be quantifiable through the level of absorbance as time goes in. In this experiment, there will be four flasks, each with 22mL of pH buffer. A different level of pH will be used for each flask; they are 4 pH, 5pH, 6pH, and 7pH. Doing only one flask at a time, 2mL of the starch substrate will be added, along with 1mL of enzyme extract. After the solution is mixed, 3mL will be removed and put into a cuvette containing three drops of the Lugol’s iodine and then vortexed. Immediately afterwards, the absorbance will be found using the spectrophotometer. This process will be repeated for seven minutes. Since the pH level helps determine how carboxyl and amino groups on the substrate or enzyme are charged, the level of pH can often denature a protein, rendering it useless. Also, since amylase is an enzyme that hydrolyzes starch, it works best at pH levels that are close to neutral (Sadava, et all. 161). If amylase works best at pH levels near 7, then the lower the pH gets, the less the absorbance will change over the seven-minute

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