Amylase Lab Report

Words: 328
Pages: 2

Introduction In chemical reactions, enzymes, which are mainly proteins, serve as catalysts, meaning they expedite reactions without being depleted. Enzymes catalyze reaction by lowering the activation energy barrier. Each enzyme has a specific shape and contains an active site. A substrate binds to this active site and is held by a weak hydrogen or ionic bond. In this lab Amylase, a type of digestive enzyme, was used to break down starch from a polysaccharide, into maltose, a disaccharide. The purpose of the lab was to determine how environmental factors affect the efficiency of enzymes. Enzyme efficiency can vary depending on different environmental factors such as, temperature, pH, and salt concentration. Enzymes are affected by temperature because at certain temperatures enzymes move more, which increases the rate at which they bind with their substrate. The optimal temperature for enzymes is 35-40 degrees Celsius. This is true with pH also, expect the optimal pH values for enzyme function is 6-8 pH. With salt concentration, the enzyme can denature and become inactive. …show more content…
The following question was asked: How does salt concentration affect how efficiently amylase breaks down starch? We hypothesized that Amylase will break down starch less effectively when the salt concentration is higher. We made this hypothesis based on our knowledge that blood cells have a salt concentration of 0.9 percent. The optimal salt concentration would be under 0.9 percent, since blood cells function at 0.9 percent. We hypothesized that the cells would not be able to function at a higher concentration, which lead us to our hypothesis. We predicted that if our hypothesis was correct the absorbance would increase as the salt concentration