Potato Enzyme Lab

The Change on O2 Bubbles Produced When Changing the Environment of an Enzyme.
Introduction
Lab 5 Exploring Enzyme Activity we are provided a chance to understand how the enzyme catalase can turn a toxic product hydrogen peroxide into a non-toxic product. We will be utilizing a potato in this experiment because it contains the enzyme catalase. In order to understand how this enzyme works we first need to know the information of enzyme, active site, substrate and how they all come together. Enzymes are used to catalyze or speed up a chemical reaction. Substrates are molecules that an enzyme pushes itself onto. The active site is a 3D shape that allows the pieces of the substrate and the enzyme to come together like a puzzle piece forming the
The enzyme that we are using to see a chemical reaction is known as catalase located into the potato. This enzyme is then going to act upon the substrate in this case hydrogen peroxide. When these two come together forming the enzyme substrate complex we will begin to see the chemical reaction carried out. The question then becomes what happens to the enzyme catalase when its exposed to extreme temperatures versus room temperature? Will it speed up? Slow down? Or fail to work in general? For my experiment I compared the difference in O2 bubbles when one potato was heated and another was at room temperature. My hypothesis is that when the potato is heated to an extreme temperature the enzyme catalase would be altered to much stopping the catalyzed ability to work with hydrogen peroxide resulting in no chemical reaction. My reasoning for this is because the enzyme is being cooked for too long changing the form and structure of the potato and causing the catalase to lose its potential to push itself onto the
We measured and marked our test tubes at 6 cm high. We filled both test tubes with warm water to the 6 cm mark and placed one potato in each tube. We placed one potato on the heat block and another on the test tube rack for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes we measured the temperature of both test tubes. Then we emptied the water from the test tubes and added hydrogen peroxide to the same 6 cm mark. We placed both tubes back on the rack and observed the amount of O2 bubbles being produce by each potato.
Results
The findings of this experiment showed that the production of O2 bubbles with a potato at 20o Celsius were far greater than the potato exposed to temperature of 77o Celsius. As you can see looking at Figure 1 the 20o caused large amounts of fizzing (O2) bubbles while 77o produced no fizzing at all.