This is a simplified visual model of how lactase and ONPG react. Each lactase enzyme has an active site, and when ONPG successfully collides with that site, one product pair is formed: ortho-nitrophenol and galactose.
The expected temperature curve is the source of truth for product counts and charts. The moving particles are an illustrative animation of the mechanism, not the measurement engine for the recorded data.
Figure 2 represents the final number of product pairs formed at different environmental temperatures after a 5-minute trial. As temperature gradually increases toward the optimum, product-pair formation increases. Above the optimum temperature (37 °C), enzymes begin to denatureDenaturation: the process in which an enzyme loses its natural structure and function, usually because of high heat. In this simulation, denaturation permanently impairs the enzyme's ability to break down substrates., which decreases the number of product pairs formed.
Typically, reaction productivity is described as a rate, such as reactions per second. For simplicity, the charts track the total number of modeled product pairs formed across 5 minutes while the A420 readout shows the simulated corrected absorbance.