Question

Lysosome allow enzymes to work at 4.5 pH.... WHAT is 4.5 pH? What does it mean? What is pH, what does it stand for??????

Answer 1

pH is an indication of how acidic or basic something is. If the number is less than 7, that just means it's acidic. A pH that's greater than 7 means the solution is basic.

Answer 2

pH denotes the acidity. Since the pH is below 7, it is acidic. If it was above 7, it would be basic and if it was 7, it would be neutral.

Answer 3

Lysosome is an enzyme that degrades bacteria wall. It cleaves between D-E or NAG-NAM. The linkage is an ether from D-E. At the active site, there is a residue called D52 that has a pKa of 4.5 and needs to be deprotonated to have any catalytic activity. There is another residue called E35, that donates the hydrogen from its carboxylic acid to the ether connecting the D-O-E and it gets cleave to where the D is positively charges and HO-E has the hydroxyl group. The D52 stabilized the positively charge on D and E53 activates water and takes an hydrogen from water and the -OH attacked the D+. In the end D-OH and HO-E are formed. This is a general acid/base catalysis and the optimum pH of this enzyme is at 5.2. D52 has to be depronated and E35 has to be protonated in order for this reaction to occur.

This probably was not the answer you were looking for, but this will be on my exam on Tuesday! lol just checking if i could write it all out without looking at my notes! :D