The Measurement of CO2 Production from Yeast Respiration


Cellular respiration is a pathway used by many cells to convert the chemical energy in complex food molecules into ATP, a form they can use for cell work. Yeast will use glucose (or sucrose) as a source of energy and will produce CO2 as a product of cellular respiration.


Your mission . . .

. . . should you choose to accept it, is to measure the rate of CO2 production by yeast in a sucrose solution.

a) Start with a hypothesis.

b) Using a 5% sucrose solution and a live yeast culture, design an experiment to achieve this mission.

c) In designing your protocol, be sure to identify the independant and dependant variables as well as an appropriate control group. Make sure you think about other variables that should be controlled.

d) Decide how to present your data and explain your results.


Follow-up questions

1. What variables did you have to control?

2. Do your data support or refute your hypothesis? Explain.

3. Think of another question that came up during your experiment that could be answered with further work.