In this experiment we will be analyzing the effectiveness of cellobiase at breaking down cellobiose to make ethanol. Biofuels are being attempted as replacements for petroleum. Biofuels are fuels that are derived from the plants around us, a much cleaner and healthier fuel for the environment. Ethanol is a biofuel that is a possibility in the search to replace petroleum. Ethanol is already used in some parts of the US at the pump but cannot completely replace the use of petroleum. The problem with Ethanol is that cellulose must be broken down in order to create ethanol, but that is a very hard task considering that plants have evolved to make their cell walls extremely hard to break down. To help break the cellulose down we rely on enzymes to help speed up the process. Enzymes are catalysts that speed up the rate at which a reaction occurs. In this lab we use cellobiase to break down the cellulose and then cellobiose into two glucose sugars which are then able to be converted into ethanol. Being able to assess the success that specific enzymes have at converting cellulose into ethanol will help scientists create the most efficient ways for us to produce mass amounts of ethanol to replace petroleum in the long run. This is very important as our petroleum is a limited resource, but the use of biofuels through plants is a much more reliable source because we constantly grow plants and they are easy to find and harvest. In the lab we will take the enzyme cellobiase and use it to assess how much it will produce at different time periods. So for the indicated time periods we will add pnitrophenol to the solution so that the solution will turn yellow to assess the amount of product produced. I believe that the longer the enzyme has to work the more amount of product will be produced.
After the experiment was completed I was correct in thinking that the longer that the enzyme was working the more product it produced. The most product was produced after 8 min of allowing the reaction to take place. At first when we measured every minute it was much harder to see the difference in the amount of product produced, but once the enzyme had been working for 5 min it got much more distinct in the amount of product was increasing as time went on. As the pnitrophenol caused the solution to turn yellow we could clearly see the difference between the time periods after around 5 min. The solution turned much darker yellow indicating that there was more product in the solution. One of the variable that I thought of was the unequal amounts of enzyme and solution and substrate poured into each tube. If there was more or less in one tube then it might have been more indicative of producing more or less product.
Day 2 was an interesting lab. I expected that the mushroom would produce less that the enzymes because it was a fungus and I did not know wether or not the mushroom would have a faster production rate than the enzyme did. But after testing the mushroom it seemed to be about equivalent to the enzymes ability. I was surprised to see how well the mushroom broke down the cellulose and the cellobiose. It made me think more about just using mushrooms to conduct reactions because there are so many different species of mushroom that I think we could easily find one that has the capability of rapidly breaking down cellulose into glucose and helping us more efficiently create biofuels. We were using a portabella mushroom which is used more in cooking than anything else so I believe that with the right mushroom the production of biofuels could be greatly helped.
(P.S. Mr. Chugh, the reason I did not post this earlier is because I gave my packet to Nate so he could do the lab because he was absent the whole week and I just got it back. I'm sorry that it is late but I couldn't do it off the top of my head. I hope you understand and can still give me full credit. Thanks!)
