How Does Sucrose Affect The Rate Of Cellular Respiration In Yeast

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Introduction
Cellular respiration is a series of metabolic reactions, in which cells of most organisms carry out to produce energy. Yeast are single-celled organisms, classified in the Fungi family, that carry out this process, converting sugar, as a source of energy, and oxygen to create adenosine tripohosphate (ATP) for other chemical reactions. If the yeast cell is in a situation when oxygen is not present, the cell will undergo fermentation, which produces carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol, aiding the baking of bread and making of wine.
When making bread, yeast produces carbon dioxide to allow the bread to rise. There are about 160 known species of yeast in the world, out of these species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as baker’s …show more content…

Table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide that is a combination of one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule. On the other hand, Sweet’N Low, also known as saccharin, is a sugar that triggers the taste buds of human tongues, but goes through the digestive system relatively untouched. Just like humans, yeast can not fully digest saccharin, so the amount of energy gained from the saccharin in decreased compared to the amount gained from sucrose. Since yeast can’t break down saccharin very well, it can’t do cellular respiration to produce the carbon dioxide that is measured for the experiment. In contrast, sucrose is made of two molecules that the yeast can break down easily. Yeast doesn’t react to how sweet the sweetener is, but the amount of energy stored within it. This experiment can be improved to further test the capabilities of yeast by adding an additional category. Changing the pH of the liquid that the yeast is in would allow us to see the effect of pH on yeast. A possible source of error is the temperature of the room. This can affect the data, and make the cold water warmer or the warm water cooler. To solve this problem, the temperature should also be measured at the 10 minute mark to see if the temperature has changed and affected the yeast’s cellular

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