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Why did salt concentration increase the rate of reaction for enzyme?
I know that as the salt concentration gets too high, it can denature an enzyme and cause the rate of reaction to decrease. However, when we added salt to a solution in my Biology lab, the rate increased. I'm not sure why it would increase, and since it did what do you think we did wrong? like what should we control when we do it again? Thank you!
2 Answers
- Anonymous8 years agoFavorite Answer
This is because salt is composed of ions (Na+ and Cl-) and the presence of ions effect how the enzyme works. Depending on the enzyme, ions can increase or decrease the rate that the enzyme is working at, or prevent it from working at all. In your case, it looks like your enzymatic activity increased when you added the salt because the amount that you added fell within that enzyme's functional threshold rather than exceeding it and denaturing the enzyme. If not, than you possibly had some sort of contamination problem going on. It depends on your expected results.
- BeverlyLv 48 years ago
Each enzyme has an optimal salt concentration. Changes in the salt concentration may also denature enzymes.
So i think it may results for increasing the rate of reactions for enzyme