TeacherTECH Back to School Biotech Series- Proteins in Action: Biofuels Enzyme

Middle School and High School Teachers are invited to attend the last of an exciting fall TeacherTECH workshop series focused on biotech.  Ready to start the new school year?  Looking for some fun “out of the box” lab activities to do with your students?  Captivate their imagination. Spark the investigator spirit. Makes the invisible visible and introduce your students to the exciting world of DNA or expand on activities you are already doing in your classes. 

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

5:00pm - 7:00pm  

San Diego Supercomputer Center, Auditorium

University of California, San Diego

Workshop Description

Need Energy?  Reveal the power of enzyme kinetics by illustrating the theory through a real world application to biofuels.  Through guided inquiry activities your students will determine how temperature, pH, the concentration of substrate and the concentration of enzyme will effect an enzymatic reaction.  Throughout the world, biofuels are commonly used to power vehicles, heat homes, and provide fuel for cooking.  Can biofuels solve global warming?  Let your students decide if this is possible!

Workshop Activities

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel derived from plant matter. Cellulose is a polysaccharide found in the cell walls of plants. The breakdown of cellulose into sugar is a multistep process that is facilitated by a family of enzymes called cellulases. Each cellulase has its unique role in processing cellulose from a long strand of glucoses down to single units that can then undergo microbial fermentation to produce ethanol.

Reveal the power of enzyme kinetics by illustrating their function through the real-world application of biofuel production. The biofuel enzyme kit tests the ability of an enzyme to increase the conversion rate of a clear substrate to a colored product. Students test and calculate the conversion rate of a sugar substrate (p-nitrophenyl glucopyranoside) to p-nitrophenol and glucose in the presence or absence of the enzyme cellobiase (part of the cellulase family). After establishing the reaction rate in the presence of the enzyme, various conditions can be tested such as the effects of pH, temperature, substrate or enzyme concentrations. In addition, students can perform independent inquiry with mushroom extracts. NEW LAB AP Bio lab 2

Please join us for an exciting and informative session of hands-on learning presented by Essy Levy, Curriculum and Training Specialist, Bio-Rad Laboratories. 

Registration is free. Refreshments will be served. Space is 
limited. Please contact Ange Mason at 858-534-5064 or amason@ucsd.edu to reserve your space.


For additional information on other TeacherTECH programs, please 
visit http://education.sdsc.edu/teachertech