A researcher is trying to study a enzyme-catalyzed reaction in lab. while the reaction is fully saturated with substrate, what should he do to speed up the reaction..?

Question

Options are :

A) Add more enzyme

B) Adjust the pH to 7.2

C) Increase the temperature

D) Remove some substrate

Answer 1

Answer C: increase the temperature

Reasoning: Enzymes have binding sites and these binding sites are where the substrates will attach in order to accelerate the reaction. Now, see the following three scenarios:

1) there is more substrate than enzyme- this means that not all the substrate has been bound by an enzyme, so to increase the reaction rate, you would add more enzyme

2) there is more enzyme than substrate- this means that there are enzymes that have not been bound to yet, so to increase the reaction, you would add more substrate

3) all the substrate and enzyme are bound (aka saturated)- this means there is no more substrate or enzyme available; thus,

(A) adding more enzyme wouldn’t do anything because there is no more substrate available to bind to

(B) adding more substrate wouldn’t work because there is no more enzyme available to bind to

Scenario 3 is what the problem is referring to. Therefore, answers A and D are incorrect, so that leaves us with answers B and C.

Now enzymes have an optimal pH level thus altering the pH level can alter the enzymes binding sites which can actually make some of the binding sites incompatible with the substrate. So that gets rid of answer B.

Finally, increasing temperature will cause an increase in collisions within the reaction which in turn increases the reaction rate initially, which is why Answer C is correct. (Just FYI, as the temperature continues to increase though, eventually the enzymes will begin to break down, so eventually the increased temperature would decrease the reaction rate since the enzymes are destroyed) Overall, the increase in temperature would only lead to an initial increase in the reaction rate followed by a decline as the temperature continues to rise and the enzymes break down.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

If this reaction is based on human enzymes then 7.2 may be the optimal ph.... as many human enzymes are optimally active at the ph. ( some are not such as in the stomach where the pH is very low) This experiment is in the lab so it is difficult to be clear about optimal pH.

As for Temperature, there is an optimal range for enzymatic reactions and if the temperature goes too high the enzyme will be denatured and reactions will cease.

Taking away substrate from a saturated reaction that is saturated will not increase reaction rate, nor will adding enzyme.