preview

Optimum Temperature Of Amylase

Decent Essays

This experiment was needed to determine the optimal temperature at which the enzyme amylase best functions. Since an increase in temperature speeds up the movement in molecules, the substrate is supposed to come in contact with the active site of the enzyme more quickly and frequently until the heat becomes an obstacle by denaturing the structure of these enzymes and thus changing its function.
There were a total of four different temperatures at which amylase activity was observed (Table 1). In order to ensure that temperature was the only manipulated variable, four test tubes were prepared with the same contents. Each tube contained about 2mL of the 1% starch solution, 4mL of deionized water, 1mL of a 6.8 pH buffer. After 10 minutes of …show more content…

It was predicted that as temperature increases, the chemical reaction would accelerate mainly because the increased temperature would speed up the motion of molecules. “Microorganisms are efficient degraders of starch, chitin, and the polysaccharides in plant cell walls” (Warren, 183). For a variety of biological purposes, plants break down long polysaccharide (starch) molecules into disaccharide (maltose) molecules and monosaccharide (glucose) molecules. There is no reason to assume that amylase is the only enzyme responsible for the hydrolysis of starch (Paleg, 904). As the results show, the reaction that consumes starch and produces maltose would eventually go to completion; however, with the addition of the enzyme amylase, the reaction should significantly speed up. It was also determined via this experiment that the addition of amylase is not the only variable that influenced the speed of this reaction; temperature also played a huge role. The evidence gathered in the experiment supported the hypothesis and matched the prediction: there was a great increase in amylase activity in higher temperature experiments up until the enzymes begin to denature. There were two ways to gather data that would prove the change in the reaction rate in presence of the amylase enzyme: the appearance of maltose or the disappearance of starch. The second test was used for this specific

Get Access