Suppose you have 20microliters of an expensive enzyme and you cannot afford to p

Question

Suppose you have 20microliters of an expensive enzyme and you cannot afford to purchase more. The enzyme has a concentratoin of 1000 unit/mL. You are going to do an experiment that requires tubes with a concentration of 1 unit/mL of enzyme and each tube will have 5 mL total volume.
a) How much enzyme does each tube require? b) How many tubes can you prepare before you run out of enzyme? Suppose you have 20microliters of an expensive enzyme and you cannot afford to purchase more. The enzyme has a concentratoin of 1000 unit/mL. You are going to do an experiment that requires tubes with a concentration of 1 unit/mL of enzyme and each tube will have 5 mL total volume.
a) How much enzyme does each tube require? b) How many tubes can you prepare before you run out of enzyme?

Explanation / Answer

This question requires the use of conversions to dilute a solution of enzyme.

To determine the amount of enzyme solution required to produce the desired dilution, use C1V1 = C2V2, where C1 is the concentration of the enzyme solution, V1 is the amount of enzyme solution required, C2 is the concentration of the diluted solution, and V2 is the volume of the diluted solution. Using this formula, 1000 unit/mL (V1) = 1 unit/mL (5 mL) V1 = (1 x 5)/1000 = 5 x 10-3 mL = 5 µL of enzyme solution required. If each dilution requires 5 microliters of the enzyme solution, then the amount of tubes that can be produced from the enzyme solution before running out is determined by dividing the amount used by each tube by the total amount of enzyme solution: # of tubes = 20 µL solution / 5 µL solution per tube = 4 Tubes 4 Tubes can be prepared before running out of solution.

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