Amylase Lab Report

This experiment reflects various background experiments and studies, such the human evolution theory which suggests that primates gained sufficient nutrients from starch not meat, it states that starch may have played a vital role in human evolution and how humans have more copies of amylase now, which further perceives that amylase may have adapted to changes in evolution overtime. Amylase a vital enzyme, and it plays many significant roles within the body. Professor Alicia, date (…....) discussed that the lower levels of concentration of amylase will have more competition for binding sites, suggesting that higher levels of amylase will have more sites available, hence the hypothesis of this experiment is to test if the higher levels of amylase concentration will increase the rate of starch breakdown and decrease the time taken for the starch to breakdown, using iodine as an indicator. …show more content…
However, the concentration of amylase will be changed to have varying concentrations of 2.5%, 7.5% and 12.5% to determine the effect on the rate of starch breakdown. The starch solution will be changed from 5ml to 20ml as 5ml is a very small volume, thus to observe the colour and the effect of different concentrations in 20ml test tubes would be more efficient. As amylase concentrations are increased, the volume of starch is increased and the drops of iodine are increased in ratio. The dependent variable will measure the time taken for the starch to breakdown within 10 minutes to determine if there is an effect within the time limit. As background research from Professor Alicia states that the higher the concentration the faster the rate of starch breakdown, thus the lowest concentration is predicted to breakdown starch at a slow rate, or may have no reaction, thus the time limit will enable to test if it has no