A question about a digestive system experiment?A scientist was investigating the best conditions for the digestion of protein. He used three flasks, each containing some egg white which made the liquid cloudy. The diagram below show the conditions in each flask:
a) egg white and pepsin
b) egg white, pepsin and hydrochloric acid
c) egg white and boiled pepsin and hydrochloric acid
After 6 hours flask B was clear and not cloudy. What does this suggest had happened?
If u could answer that would be a great help. Please and thank u (;
Posted by firexstarz
The conditions in B are best suited for digestion of protein. The egg white (protein) is the agent causing the cloudy liquid. Hence when pepsin digests the egg white, the liquid will not be cloudy anymore. C will still be totally cloudy because the boiling of the pepsin, which is an enzyme, denatures it and prevents it from digesting the egg white. The contents of A will be slightly less cloudy, since without an acidic pH pepsin is still able to work a little, just not optimally.
Posted by Flash_crasher
Flask B has all the optimum conditions needed for the breakdown of proteins in egg white. Pepsin is the enzyme responsible for breaking down those proteins, but at first it exists in an inactive form called pepsinogen. Pepsinogen must first be activated, converting it to pepsin. And, you guessed it, hydrochloric acid acts as the activator.
As for (a), without the hydrochloric acid, pepsinogen will not be activated, and there will be no enzyme activity. As for (c), boiling the pepsin will denature it. Denatured enzymes are biologically inactive as their native conformations have been distorted.
Orignal From: A question about a digestive system experiment?
Post a Comment