Denaturing Enzymes

[DameonGrey]

I have a question relating to this. In my Biology 100 course we had a lab experiment we're writing a paper on. We had to test the effect of adding pH2, 4, 6, 8, and 12 to liver enzymes and dH2O and then add H2O2 to the solutions and measured the foam produced. What confused most of our class is the more basic pH's resulted in more catalase activity which wasn't what we expected. We thought the more acidic pH's would result in less activity (less foam) which it did, and the neutral pH's would result in the most activity. But the more basic pH's had the most foam. Does anyone know if that's what was supposed to happen, or did something go wrong? Even our teacher can't explain why this happened.

Thank you
--Dorian

[beckyboo]

sorry i cant answer that but i also have a question about the enzme catalase, in our experiment with hydrogen peroxide the rate kept increasing up til 50 C when we stopped cos it was too fast to measure, but i thought catalase would denature at about 37 C as its found in mammals after searching for its optimum temp i got things as low as 20 C up to 70 C does anyone know what its optimum temp is?

[mith]

you should do a control to see whether it decomposes faster IN GENERAL if the temperature is higher....and of course how much faster. Secondly, the enzyme has some resilience in temperature tolerance, it won't denature as soon as you go above 37.