Bio A2 coursework - catalase activity

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone could help me out with my bio coursework? Originally my experiment was going to be adding hydrogen peroxide to pieces of liver from different animals (e.g. pig, sheep, cow) as a way of measuring catalase activity.

However, now I've come up with a slightly different experiment which I think would be better. I would add different ethanol concentrations to pieces of the same liver, and then add hydrogen peroxide to each. I think doing this experiment would be better because it removes all the confounding variables e.g. the diet, age etc. of the animals from which the livers came from.

Would this work or would the alcohol have had to be ingested whilst the animals was still alive?

Please let me know :smile:

OP

Anyone?

Moved to the Bio forum for you :h:

. You should get more responses here :yep:

Reply 3

lilixxx1000

OP

16

Original post by Nirgilis

Moved to the Bio forum for you :h:

. You should get more responses here :yep:

Thanks

Reply 4

Amphiprion

16

Original post by lilixxx1000

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone could help me out with my bio coursework? Originally my experiment was going to be adding hydrogen peroxide to pieces of liver from different animals (e.g. pig, sheep, cow) as a way of measuring catalase activity.

However, now I've come up with a slightly different experiment which I think would be better. I would add different ethanol concentrations to pieces of the same liver, and then add hydrogen peroxide to each. I think doing this experiment would be better because it removes all the confounding variables e.g. the diet, age etc. of the animals from which the livers came from.

Would this work or would the alcohol have had to be ingested whilst the animals was still alive?

Please let me know :smile:

It is difficult to comment on this because you've not quite fully explained the investigation.

Are you immersing the liver in hyrogen peroxide or dropping it on with a pippette? Adding too much/too little could distort your results so make sure you use equal volumes of HP on all samples of liver. Same regarding liver size, make sure all samples are the same size and that the size is appropriate. If tiny pieces of liver you may struggle to get good results without highly precise equipment, if huge great chunks then there may be other complications. I don't know for sure but just make sure the sizes are all the same in the name of consistency.

How are you planning to measure the oxygen and water output of the catalase?

Have you discussed this with your teacher as I would have thought that the kind of liver you will have access to may have had it's enzyme load already destroyed. Liver from supermarkets etc is often frozen or stored in unfavourable conditions, destroying enzymes. You should do what you can to make sure your sample liver is sourced as fresh as possible (from a local butcher maybe?) and is acquired as close to the start of the practical as possible, i.e the morning of the day the practical is on.

Why are you considering adding ethanol? In order to reduce number and efficiency of catalase within the sample? To then observe the different catalase output relative to the amount of ethanol/catalase activity?

I know this topic is old but I hope you see this in time! Good luck!

Bio A2 coursework - catalase activity

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