How Does Pectinase Solution Impact Juice Extraction in Fruit?

[Sayuri09]

Homework Statement

I was looking up experiments that could help me determine the effects of different factors on enzyme activity, and I noticed that in most of the experiments that included the enzyme pectinase, pectinase was not treated as a liquid. For example, after letting pieces of fruit sit in a pectinase solution, the instructions said to drain out the solution (including the fruit pieces) through a filter (perhaps a coffee filter) in order to measure the amount of juice as a product. However, this juice would just be mixed in with the pectinase solution, which wouldn't yield real results.

Homework Equations

None

The Attempt at a Solution

I was thinking that pectinase could be found a powder, but then, while looking it up on the Carolina Biological Supply website, I couldn't find it as anything but a liquid. (Plus, since the fruit pieces are supposed to be submerged in a pectinase solution, it would be a liquid anyway.) I googled it at school, too, and I really couldn't find anything more helpful than what was at Carolina Biological Supply. Maybe I'm missing something in terms of the experiment itself.


Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Borek]

Not sure if I understand your problem. What is the procedure? I assume you start with pieces of fruits, you add pectinase solution, after some time you filter liquid phase out and you measure its volume? Is that right?

Perhaps volume of filtrated solution is sum of volumes?

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[Sayuri09]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Yes, the procedure says to add pectinase solution to pieces of fruit and then take the volume of the filtered liquid. My problem is that, since both the juice produced from the reaction and the pectinase solution are liquid, the volume of the liquid after filtering will include both of these, and I need to find the volume of only the juice. Should I just subtract the original volume of the pectinase solution from the volume of the filtered liquid to get the volume of the juice?

 

[Borek]

Should I just subtract the original volume of the pectinase solution from the volume of the filtered liquid to get the volume of the juice?

That's what I would do.

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