Lysosomes - Lysosomal enzymes (Mar/03/2009 )

Lysosomal enzymes has their optimum pH in acidic range. Now, when a lysosome gets burst, these enzymes get released in the cytoplasm, which does not have acidic environment. Then how these enzymes exhibit their activity of degradation at pH different from their optimum pH??

Hey

Don't really work on this but this is what I think......All enzymes have a pH optima but that doesn't mean that they are not acive at other pH. So they are active but the activity is much less than what you would normally see at the optima. It goes like a gaussian curve with the maxima at the optimum pH value.

Best
TC

you will also find that a lot of enzymes have pH optima that are different from the pH of their normal milieu but they still work fine.

Oh Yeah. Thanks you both.