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The Effect Of Ph And Temperature On Enzyme

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Introduction
When examining the effect of pH or temperature on enzyme function it is important to consider the type of enzyme being examined. While there may be an apparent effect of pH and temperature on all enzymatic function, the extent of the effect is dependent on the type of enzyme being examined. The current study is focused on the effect of temperature and pH on catechol oxidase; an enzyme that oxidises catechol.
The examination of enzymatic activity under the constraints of variable temperature and pH levels are important in order to understand how metabolic processes fluctuate with variable environmental conditions (Freese et al., 2012). For our purposes, enzyme activity is defined as the amount of time a substrate is catalyzed by an enzyme, and is dependent on temperature and pH levels (Tijskens et al., 2001).
While there is variability in the effect of environmental conditions on enzyme activity, studies tend to show that enzyme activity is very low and sometimes inactive with lower pH values with all enzymes (Da Silva et al., 2011) and that pH and temperature levels outside of the normative range tend to have a negative effect on all types of enzymes (De Angelis et al., 2010). For example, there are particular enzymes that are more active in lower thermal temperatures as compared to enzymes that are more commonly found in warm bodied organisms (Freese et al., 2012). This suggests that the variability in enzymatic activity is partly due to the natural environment

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