A&O SCI M105 Lecture 8: Lecture 8
28 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Some oceans are not so much productive as others. Top: sea surface nitrate concentration: there are lots of nitrate in southern ocean and northern ocean. Little nitrate in subtropical gyres in pacific and atlantic and indian oceans: nitrate is important for phytoplankton that need it to take up nutrients, no3- delivers nitrate to these organisms, enzymes need nitrogen to speed up metabolic processes. If we were to model distribution of nitrogen, the bottom graph is what it will look like without biology: biology is important in reducing nitrogen concentration in some areas. Little change in concentration means immense change in uptake rate. Levels out (saturation) where you increase nitrate concentration but no increase in uptake rate. Vmax: rate uptake reaches half of maximum. 3d protein structure, has cofactor or metal in there. Strong increase in uptake rate: add more substrate, more enzymes can be occupied. Strong increase in uptake rate: enzyme is under saturated with substrate.
