Sugar And Sugar Fermentation Essay

The question to be answered in this experiment is, “How does different sugars and sugar substitutes affect the rate of fermentation in yeast?” This question requires background knowledge on yeast, sugars/sugar substitutes, and fermentation.

Fermentation is the process that an organism goes through to either create lactic acid or ethanol and CO2. This is done without the use of oxygen, also known as anaerobic respiration. There are multiple steps of both fermentation types. They both begin with the glycolysis, where 1 glucose molecule is broken down into 2 pyruvic acid molecules and 2 ATP molecules. From this step the two feremenation types then branch off. In alcoholic fermentation, pyruvic acid and NADH is converted to 2 ethanol, NAD+, and 2CO2. In lactic acid fermentation, pyruvic acid and NADH is converted to 2 lactic acids and NAD+. Yeast is a very critical portion of this experiment. Yeast is a eukaryotic (has a nucleus) unicellular organism. It is a fungi that is commonly used for baking, and alcohol production. This is because yeast undergoes alcoholic fermentation. Because of this it has the products of CO2 and ethanol.

To understand how the different types of sugar may affect fermentation, knowledge on the sugars is essential. Additionally, glucose is

This is because cane sugar has a lot calories which means it has energy, energy is created by cellular respiration with glucose and oxygen. If cane sugar has energy then it has to have glucose, as mentioned before, yeast feeds on simple sugar like glucose to go through fermentation, thus since the cane sugar has the materials for fermentation in abundance, then it will have a higher rate of fermentation than the sweeteners which have no calories. If it has no calories then it has no energy and thus no glucose, nothing for the yeast to use in