Results and Discussion
Reactions are never ending and always occurring in organisms, making them essential for our functioning. Enzymes are catalysts that are used to speed up these reactions. If you take for example if a person was trying to get from Point A to Point B, there are two routes; one route where you have to go over a steep hill, which would take additional time or the other route is to go around the hill and get to Point B using less time. This example is an illustration of enzyme catalyst. They are what give reactions an alternative route. They allow reactions to occur faster however, enzyme activity may be affected every so often. Some affects on enzyme activity include pH, temperature, enzyme concentration and substrate concentration. If pH increases or decreases from optimal value the rate of catalyzed reactions decrease. If temperature rises, the rate of reaction increases (more frequent and stronger collisions occur between substrate and enzyme. In addition, increasing substrate concentration will increase a reaction up to a point. Substrates are one of the more important factors in enzyme activity, because they are the reactants. They are what bind to the active site to start enzyme catalyst activity. …show more content…
As the substrate concentration decreased the volume of gas produced and the rate of oxygen production also decreased. This conclusion was also true, when I observed the other groups data. This shows that the higher the substrate concentration the more quickly product is produced, which in our case, is the amount of oxygen gas produced. This will also cause the rate of the reaction (rate of oxygen production) to increase until enzyme saturation is reached. However, in our experiment we did the opposite, we were decreasing our concentration instead of increasing it, so we were not able to observe enzyme reaching its saturation
Reactions are never ending and always occurring in organisms, making them essential for our functioning. Enzymes are catalysts that are used to speed up these reactions. If you take for example if a person was trying to get from Point A to Point B, there are two routes; one route where you have to go over a steep hill, which would take additional time or the other route is to go around the hill and get to Point B using less time. This example is an illustration of enzyme catalyst. They are what give reactions an alternative route. They allow reactions to occur faster however, enzyme activity may be affected every so often. Some affects on enzyme activity include pH, temperature, enzyme concentration and substrate concentration. If pH increases or decreases from optimal value the rate of catalyzed reactions decrease. If temperature rises, the rate of reaction increases (more frequent and stronger collisions occur between substrate and enzyme. In addition, increasing substrate concentration will increase a reaction up to a point. Substrates are one of the more important factors in enzyme activity, because they are the reactants. They are what bind to the active site to start enzyme catalyst activity. …show more content…
As the substrate concentration decreased the volume of gas produced and the rate of oxygen production also decreased. This conclusion was also true, when I observed the other groups data. This shows that the higher the substrate concentration the more quickly product is produced, which in our case, is the amount of oxygen gas produced. This will also cause the rate of the reaction (rate of oxygen production) to increase until enzyme saturation is reached. However, in our experiment we did the opposite, we were decreasing our concentration instead of increasing it, so we were not able to observe enzyme reaching its saturation