Liver Enzyme SAC Question

[Christiano]

In my prac involving catalase in liver catalyzing hydrogen peroxide, one of the tubes contained grounded liver. It asks 'what are two reasons for grinding the liver'. One of the reasons I can think of is to increase the SA:V of the liver, exposing more enzymes that will be available for catalyzing the peroxide. What is another reason?

[HERculina]

hm tricky q. indeed.
not sure abotu 2nd point but i found on google: "Grinding up beef liver yields a substance rich in enzymes"
maybe it activates the enzyme somehow? :/

[rolftina]

I did this like 2 or 3 weeks ago & I just said that it's just increasing the SA:V ratio...
More exposure of the enzyme = higher likelihood of collisions between Hydrogen Peroxide substrates and the enzyme Catalase

[slothpomba]

If you get a chunk of a liver out of an animal and don't touch it the very top surface of the liver will be different from whats inside, i just reasoned this logically not sure if its actually correct but it makes sense.

Substances flow *into* the liver and thats where it does its work, so it stands to reason the enzyme concentration would be higher inside the liver, so grinding it up would expose more of the liver tissues contained closer to the center of the liver.

It would also more evenly distribute the enzyme through the now "mashed" liver where as before there might of been spots for some reason or another that would have had higher enzymes than others or lower enzyme concentration than other parts of the liver. Imagine if we sliced up two cubes of liver and for one reason or another one of them had a high enzyme concentration and another one had a low concentration, it would interfere with your experimental results.

So, griding the liver up would make the enzyme concentration more homogeneous.