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Lab Report Organic Compound Catecholase

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Introduction The organic compound catecholase is commonly found in plants and consists of two substrates called catechol and oxygen. When these substrates react with each other they form a brown color, often seen in vegetables and fruits left out after being cut open. (Wahlert and Holland, 1999) This reaction is why when a potato is cut open and left to sit, it will begin to brown. During the genetic mutation of potatoes, scientists can limit the amount of the substrate which causes less severe browning or no browning in potatoes. (Adams and Brown, 2007). The potato contains enzymes in which the catechol reacts with and it speeds the process up. If catecholase were left alone and without a catalyst (enzyme) the reaction would take much longer. …show more content…

The control tube is tube number three because it contained the same ingredients as that of the first experiment where we determined that when catechol reacts with potato extract it turns brown. In test tubes one and two a different amount of catechol was added. This is because we needed to determine what kind of inhibitor the PTU was. Because there was no change in color with either test tube one or two, we found that PTU was a non-competitive inhibitor. Discussion The hypothesis created at the beginning of this lab was that PTU is a non-competitive inhibitor and the color of the solution would remain constant after the inhibitor was added due to it changing the shape of the enzyme completely and not allowing the catechol substrate to react with the potato enzyme. During the lab we found that PTU was a non-competitive inhibitor, due to no change in the color of the solution after the inhibitor was added. Our results were conclusive with our hypothesis but our hypothesis was incorrect as were our lab results. According to other studies done on the inhibitor phenylthiourea, it is in fact a competitive inhibitor and our experiment was incorrectly tested. The addition of the extra catechol was supposed to have sped up the reaction with the enzyme and force the inhibitor out of the enzymes active site. If there was more time allowed to observe any possible color changes the results would have been more conclusive and our results more accurate. In other

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