What is the optimum pH for catalase from potato?
I feel sure that the optimal pH is around 7. This is based on the fact that experiments on potato catalase normally specify a buffer at about 7. eg Microscale Investigations with Catalase. In a practical exam for A level, the pH of 7.2 was specified for an experiment on the effect of surface area of discs of potato on catalase activity. I attach an extract from several web pages which seemed useful on this topic (catalase.pdf) – the URLs of the pages are mentioned in the document. The first webpage mentions the database at http://brenda.bc.uni-koeln.de/ and the second pdf file (catalase_optimum.pdf) shows the records of the optimum pH for catalase from different sources, listed in that datbase. You will notice that it does not contain a reference to potato (Solanum tuberosum) so I suspect the value is not actually known. As you probably know, the normal buffer system used for this enzyme is Sørensen’s phosphate buffer, but this only covers the range 5 to 8 which is normally sufficient
