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Acid Phosphatase Lab

Decent Essays

All living things have thousands upon thousands of chemical reactions that are constantly occurring simultaneously at such a fast rate within the organism (1). Enzymes are high energy proteins that cause the catalyzation (addition of energy needed for a reaction to take place) of chemical reactions in living organisms (1). The amount of an enzyme present in a solution can be measured in enzyme units (U) which is the amount of activity that it takes to catalyze the conversion of 1 micromole of substrate per minute (2). In this lab, wheat germ was purified to determine the protein concentration and how much acid phosphatase activity is present in each step of the purification process. Acid phosphatase is an enzyme that is needed to catalyze the …show more content…

Assays are used as an indicator of whether or not the purification process is working correctly, or if the proteins have been destroyed in the process (1). The lab consisted of purifying wheat germ by utilizing the enzyme that is already present in the substance itself, acid phosphatase. Acid phosphatase was being separated from the wheat germ using a centrifuge (a machine that spins at high speeds in order to separate substances with different densities in a solution) during each step of the experiment to continuously separate and purify the sample (3). There were three assays in which were used during the experiment. One assay used during the experiment was a Bradford dye reagent, which was a blue dye that was added to samples of the supernatant to display the different concentrations of proteins present in each. Another assay that was used during the lab was the KOH. This reagent was added to different samples of the supernatants than what were used for the Bradford dye. The KOH was used to help stop the reaction that had originally taken place from the addition of the acid phosphatase reagent in step three, but its main use was to distinct the different concentrations of the proteins present in each step of the purification

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