Factors Affecting Enzyme Activity: Temperature, pH, and Concentration
Students will explore active transport mechanisms, understanding how cells use energy to move substances against their concentration gradients.
About This Topic
Students will explore active transport mechanisms, understanding how cells use energy to move substances against their concentration gradients.
Key Questions
- Analyse the biphasic effect of increasing temperature on enzyme activity, distinguishing between the kinetic benefit of increased collision frequency and the structural cost of progressive denaturation, and predict the optimal temperature profile for a thermophilic archaeal enzyme.
- Explain how pH affects enzyme activity by altering the ionisation states of catalytic residues in the active site and disrupting tertiary structure stabilising interactions, and justify why pepsin and trypsin have evolved contrasting pH optima.
- Design a controlled experiment to investigate the effect of substrate concentration on the initial rate of an enzyme-catalysed reaction, identifying all controlled variables and specifying how you would calculate initial rate from the raw data.
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