Enzyme Concentration Lab Report

In this lab, a series of methodologies were used to determine amylase concentration and gene copy number in order to determine if enzyme production, gene copies and gene evolution were associated (Tracey 2018). Using the equation generated from lab 3, individuals were able to calculate their unique amylase concentrations. However, the calibration curves and equations were unique to each student, rather than a universal equation for each student to use. Each student’s performance of generating the calibration curve is unique to themselves, but could include flaws as well, with some students having higher correlations compared to their peers. The correlation of the calibration curve generated by me had a strong correlation, however not all students

Subsequential to this, the concentrations were used to determine the mean of each individual starch diet types to generate error bars. However, both figures’ errors bars are overlapping, thus it can be concluded that the figures generate are not statistically significant. In additions to weaknesses present, this lab’s methodology continues to exemplify ambiguity by allowing student interpretations of their results rather than using a sole objective and draw comparisons from one figure generated. This is present in lab 7 and 8 where students individually measure out the distance migrated as well as drawing their own individual line of best fit to conclude their amylase fragment size. Each student will objectively look at the distance differently, but the biggest flaw is the inaccurate line of best fit. The line of best fit is very open to uncertainty resulting in a crude fragment size of the amylase gene. A suggestion would be to have students use excel to generate a semi-log graph and create a trendline there and conclude their individual amylase from an equation

The calculate gene copy number for me was 4 gene copies placing me in a very low starch diet type. However, the map used in determining gene pool region is limited in its research, only certain regions were tested and, in my case, the ancestral starch diet type was not truly known there was no starch diet type for West Africa, so I had to broaden the range and choose from a region present in Africa, whose ancestral diet types are most likely to be variant from my own ancestors. While the limited hypothesis generated from the Perry paper was correlating, the graph generated in lab 8 shows a very weak correlation. It can be concluded that the original hypothesis that enzyme production, gene copies, and gene evolution is not proven to be true based from the evidence present. There is a very weak correlation, that’s also negative too, showing that the gene copies aren’t influencing the production of enzyme copies, but rather several different factors are present and controlling the enzyme production. Gene expression is due to several factors and diet is usually a factor that influences this, especially from methylation concentrations present in the