Why does liver react with hydrogen peroxide

Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Article last reviewed: St. Skip to content. Find out More. Related Posts Analysis of Scientific Experiments Scientific Method In order to create and perform scientific experiments, you must first become aware of the…. It is a logical, systematic approach to solve a problem. Null hypothesis, Alternative hypothesis, P value and Z test Null hypothesis: is the claim being assessed in a hypothesis.

For a claim to be…. Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide Lab Answers Objective: In this lab, we will perform the catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide under various…. Hydrogen Peroxide Breakdown in Liver vs. Potato What gas was produced by the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide? Newest Oldest Most Voted. Inline Feedbacks. Reply to Linden 2 years ago. All rights reserved.

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Create your free OpenLearn profile. Course content Course content. The science of nutrition and healthy eating Start this free course now. Free course The science of nutrition and healthy eating. Download this video clip. Video player: Please note this video has no spoken audio. These types of chemical reactions can be helped to occur more quickly by using enzymes. Enzymes are made out of protein and they speed up the rate of a chemical reaction by acting as a catalyst. A catalyst provides the necessary environment for the chemical reaction to occur, which speeds up the reaction.

Certain catalysts work for certain kinds of reactions. In other words, each enzyme has a particular type of reaction that it can activate. Enzymes are proteins, which are molecules that are very large and dynamic. They can be very fussy, and sometimes need to be in certain environments or conditions to work, and the ideal conditions are usually reflective of where the enzyme must normally function in the body. In other words, different tissues are home to different enzymes, and an enzyme should be able to function in the conditions that surround it in the tissue it's supposed to function in.

Some enzymes can be damaged under certain conditions, such as heat. A damaged enzyme will no longer work to catalyze a chemical reaction. One source of enzymes is the liver , which needs to break down many substances in the body. Catalase is one enzyme from liver that breaks down harmful hydrogen peroxide into oxygen gas and water. When this chemical reaction occurs, you can see the oxygen gas bubbles escaping and causing the reaction to foam, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. When blended liver is exposed to hydrogen peroxide, the catalase enzyme in the liver reacts with the hydrogen peroxide to form oxygen gas, which creates the visible bubbles in this photograph, and water. In this science fair project, you will use fresh or frozen liver as a source of catalase and investigate how the activity of the enzyme can change under certain conditions. What does catalase do? Under which conditions does it work best? Why do we need catalase in our liver? To do this type of experiment you should know what the following terms mean.

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