On the first day of our lab we began our experiment by filling five cuvettes with stop solution. Then we filled both two conical tubes labeled"Enzyme Reaction"and "Control" with the substrate (cellobiose). After pipetting 500 ul of solution from the "Enzyme Reaction" tube into the first cuvette we began our timer and at intervals of one, two, four, six, and eight minutes we added the substrate to the stop solution. Immediately we noticed that the cuvettes containing the stop solution had a color change from clear to a yellowish color. This was the artificial substrate making the glucose illuminate.
On day two, we brought in store brought mushrooms. We weighed out 1 gram of mushroom and then ground up the mushroom with a mortar and pestle, for every 1 gram of mushroom extract we added 2 ml of extraction buffer. Next, using a centrifuge, we "pelleted" the solid particles by spinning at top speed for 2 minutes. After this we labeled our cuvettes from 1 until 6. We obtained a conical tube and pipetted 3 ml of substrate into the tube, which we labeled "button" after the type of mushroom we used. As we did the day before, we added the extract (mushroom) at 1 minute, two, four, six and eight. Surprisingly the mushroom extract made the solution in the cuvettes have the same reaction, a change of color!
Because the reactions were the same, they pose an idea. If the reactions with a natural extract were similar to a chemical than maybe we could use other organisms in nature as substitutes for chemicals. The idea of this lab was to show us how it may be possible to come up with new ways of obtaining resources that are less harmful to the environment.
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