Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2014, Volume 35
Dawn Carter
Abstract
Amylase enzymes breakdown starch into simpler sugars and are produced by plants, fungi, bacteria and mammals. This pair of laboratory modules addresses two questions. The first, "Do amylase enzymes from different organisms have similar reaction conditions?" examines the pH optima for alpha amylases from several organisms, using a quantitative starch-iodine reaction to measure starch concentration and determine the rate of reaction for each enzyme. The second module examines the question: "How similar are amylase enzymes from different organisms at the nucleic acid and amino acid levels?" This module uses PCR to examine DNA sequence specificity and simple bioinformatics tools such as NCBI and DNA subway to compare nucleotide and amino acid sequences.
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