Question

You are studying a metabolic enzyme that is found in organisms living at extremely high temperatures and an acidic environment. You carry out your reactions on your lab bench at room temperature in water and find that the reaction is quite slow, even though you are able to reach a Vmax. Which of the following is not a good way to increase the rate of the reaction?

A) Add more enzyme to the reaction.
B) Increase substrate concentration.
C) Decrease the pH of the reaction solution.
D) Increase the temperature.

Answer 1

B) Increase substrate concentration.

Step-by-step explanation:

As the organism is living in environment with high temprature and (acidic) low pH the enzymes are affected as follows :

Increased Temprature : Initially the rate of reaction increase (10 degrees rise in T causes 50 to 100% rise in activity of enzyme) but ultimately over the period of time enzymes become denatured , hence they cannot stimulate the rate of reaction even if the substrates are added.

Effect of pH: pH is the factor of stability of the enzymes but if the pH becomes extremely low or high the activity of enzymes is affected in such a way resulting in complete loss of activity of enzyme hence addtion of substrates can't increase the activity.

Thus among the given options , option B is the right choice as the increase in the substrate won't increase the activity of the enzyme as they are already denatured.

Answer 2

Increasing the substrate concentration.

Step-by-step explanation:

Increasing the substrate concentration can increase the rate of the reaction to a certain point. However, once all of the enzymes bounded to the substrate, any further addition of it will not be going to affect or increase the rate of the reaction at all, as all the enzymes will be saturated and working in their maximum rates.