How does changing the pH affect the rate of enzyme activity?
Answer:
pH also known as ka can affect the rate of enzyme activity in a various amount of ways.
For instance, the stomach has a very acidic structure, meaning its pH number is very low. The enzymes that function within the stomach are used to functioning in such an acidic environment and can only survive in this pH. If you take the enzymes and place them in a different pH, it will cause malfunctioning and they will no longer function as they should.
To understand this a bit better, you can compare the enzymes to children and the pH to the grade they are in at school. If you take a straight A third grader and place him in a 7th grade class, then he won't get straight A's anymore because he is no longer in the environment that he belongs in.
So therefore, enzyme activity is best under its ideal pH programing, if you deviate the pH the enzyme will either lower its effeiciency in doing its job or it will become non functional.
It depends on the enzyme, some love a wide range of environments while others can not survive even small variations.
Each enzyme has its own pH range where it can function properly. The pH activity graph of an enzyme is a bell-shaped graph where it will have the highest activity at a particular pH. Before and after this paricular pH, the activity decreases as the chemical bonds in the enzyme get disrupted, which may cause the tertiary structure to change. This is likely to cause a change in the active site and hence the lower activity.
At extreme pH, the enzyme denatured as the chemical bonds are destroyed.
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