🚀 go-pugleaf

William R. Penrose appears to have typed something along the lines of:
> In article <MN$GEDAzIhmyEwQU@gertrood.demon.co.uk> Michael Johnson <mjohnson@gertrood.demon.co.uk> writes:

> >I am currently planning an A-level chemistry investigation into the
> >reaction kinetics of the urea/urease reaction. Can anyone please point
> >me in the right direction in terms of methods of measuring rate,
> >inhibitors to the reaction, how to extract urease, structure etc. Any
> >websites, books or other additional innformation would also be handy.

> This is a favorite expt for undergraduate biochem labs.  I suggest that you 
> raid the library for lab manuals and look through them.  Urease is a nice 
> rugged enzyme with a cheap and easy assay (the Conway dish) that can be used 
> to demo most of the elementary principles of enzymology.

Simpler method would be to use an indicator to measure the production of
ammonia during the course of the reaction - stop the rxn at various
times, etc. Remember though that all the interesting bits of enzyme kinetics
happen in the first few seconds of teh reaction, so with the sort of
equipment available to you in school (unless you happen to have a stop-flow
system, which I very much doubt) you won`t be able to do very much. As for
structure, go to the protein databank (european mirror at
http://www2.ebi.ac.uk/pdb/) and search for the co-ordinates file. While you`re
there, get a program like rasmol (I`m assuming you`re using a PeeCee) to
view it on. Once you`ve worked out how to use it, you`ll find it great
fun! (not to mention impressing your teachers hugely :)


Rhiannon

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