Hydrogen Peroxide Activity Of Catalase

Discussion

The data from the experiment supports the hypothesis that as the hydrogen peroxide concentration increases, the rate of reaction will increase until it reaches equilibrium. The rate of reaction follows the similar trend of rapidly increasing until reaching a plateau, as shown in Figure 4. The catalase reaction rate grew exponentially from 0.00 s-1 at 0 v/v% to 0.77 s-1 at 3 v/v%, and then the reaction rate significantly slows down to 0.65 s-1 at 5 v/v% (Figure 1 and 2).

Figure 4: The relationship between increasing substrate concentration and the rate of reaction of the enzyme. The effect of increasing hydrogen peroxide concentration on the activity of catalase follows the same trend (RCS, n.d.).

However, there were not enough samples

However, it is possible for the rate of reaction to slow down and reach equilibrium, the state where the reaction rate is not increasing nor decreasing, for several reasons (Worthington Biochemical Corporation, 2015). The main reason that this may occur is from the ratio between enzymes and substrates. If the substrate concentration is too high, there would not be enough enzymes to catalyse the reactions, after which the reactions could only go at the reaction rate for that number of enzymes (Crierie & Gregg 2010 p.24-27). Other reasons may be inhibitors or environmental factors, such as pH and temperature (Crierie & Gregg 2010, p.27). In this practical, as the concentration increased, the amount of yeast enzyme catalase did not significantly change, thus making it impossible for the graph to be exponentially

Enzyme activity is impacted by temperature; the colder it gets, the slower the enzyme activity (Crierie & Gregg 2010, p.26). In this experiment, the solutions were tested from 0 v/v% to 5 v/v%, meaning that 5 v/v% were done last. This would mean that the enzyme activity would be slower at that point than it was at the beginning of the lesson, when 0 v/v% was tested. This may have impacted on the 5 v/v% data, because it was slightly lower than expected (the expected level was near 3 v/v% data