Pinto Beans Essay

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Catalase is a common enzyme that is produced in all living organisms. All living organisms are made up of cells and within the cells, enzymes function to increase the rate of chemical reactions. Enzymes function to create the same reactions using a lower amount of energy. The reactions of catalase play an important role to life, for example, it breaks down hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. Our group developed an experiment to test the rate of reaction of catalase in whole carrots and pinto beans with various concentrations of hydrogen peroxide. Almost all enzymes are proteins and proteins are made up of amino acids. The areas within an enzyme speed up the chemical reactions which are known as the active sites, and are also where the …show more content…

More hydrogen ions in a solution is a result of lower pH, while fewer hydrogen ions in a solution is a result of increased pH. Meaning that a lower pH level results in a higher enzyme activity reaction and a higher pH level results in a lower enzyme activity reaction (Christianson, 2011 ). Is there a difference in the rate of reaction of catalase activity between pinto beans and carrots? Based on our research, we believe that the catalase activity in pinto beans will increase more relative to the catalase activity in whole carrots because pinto beans are higher in protein. We conducted an experiment to test our hypothesis that if we increase the hydrogen peroxide concentration then we will see higher kinetic saturation in pinto beans over whole …show more content…

In both solutions of catalase there is a steady increase in reaction relative to the hydrogen peroxide concentration as it increases. A significant jump is observed in the carrot catalase solution between .25% and .5% whereas the pinto bean catalase solution has a steady increase. Each solution doesn’t generate much more reaction to the next increment of hydrogen peroxide concentration, 1%. In general it stayed level. This continued to be a trend for the pinto bean catalase solution, plateauing through to the 6% concentration of hydrogen peroxide. This is known as the point of saturation. Whole carrots have a different reaction to the higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide. There is a dramatic increase in the rate of reaction of catalase enzymes in the whole carrot, meaning that the saturations kinetics can be utilized at much higher rates of concentration.

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