Higher Biology Assignment Flashcards
What is your aim?
To investigate how changing concentration of copper nitrate solution affects yeast bead buoyancy.
What is your underlying biology?
An inhibitor is a substance which slows down the rate of an enzyme-controlled reaction by occupying or blocking the active site of an enzyme from the substrate so products cannot be made. There are three types of inhibitors; competitive, non competitive and feedback inhibitors. Competitive inhibitors are molecules of a similar shape to that of the substrate and bind to the active site, preventing products from being made. Non- competitive inhibitors are unlike substrates completely and cannot bind to the active site so bind elsewhere to prevent anything from binding to the active site so prevents products from being made. Feedback inhibition is different. It is when a product made by the enzyme acts as an inhibitor in the pathway.
What is your method?
What is your aim?
To investigate how changing concentrations of copper nitrate solution affects yeast bead buoyancy.
What is your underlying biology?
An inhibitor is a substance which slows down the rate of an enzyme-controlled reaction by occupying or blocking the active site of an enzyme from the substrate so products cannot be made. There are three types of inhibitor molecules and they are competitive inhibitors, non-competitive inhibitors and feedback inhibitors.Competitive inhibitors are molecules of a similar shape to that of the substrate and bind to the active site, preventing products from being made. Non- competitive inhibitors are unlike substrates completely and cannot bind to the active site so bind somewhere else to prevent anything from binding to the active site and also prevents products from being made. Feedback inhibition is different. It is when a product made by the enzyme acts as an inhibitor in the pathway.
What is your method?
Using 5 beakers and 5+ yeast beads, were placed in the beakers with differing concentrations of copper nitrate solutions and times for 10 mins. Using a measuring cylinder with 20cm3 of hydrogen peroxide the yeast beads were dropped in and timed how long it took them to sink and rise back up again.
What is your analysis?
Fig 2 shows that inhibitors reduce the rate of reaction because they block substrates from creating products. This is because the line that states ‘normal enzyme’ is higher than the two ‘inhibitor’ lines. Like our results, the inhibitor also slows down the rate of reaction as the graph shows an increase in the time taken.
What is your conclusion?
In conclusion, changing the nitrate solution concentration does have an effect on yeast beads. The higher the concentration of the solution the longer it took for the yeast bead to fall and rise.
What is your evaluation?
To improve the results we could have had a bigger group. Just the two of us made it hard to be accurate with the timer, having someone to say start ad stop would have been better. Also having more repeats would have made the results more reliable, some of the times were off but we didn’t have the time to do more repeats.
