Structure of nucleic acids and replication of DNA — practice question

Biofuels are alcohols made by fermenting sugars obtained from crop waste. This waste includes cellulose and other organic substances in cell walls. Scientists studied how sugars could be produced from crop waste for biofuel manufacture. They found that a strain of the fungus Penicillium citrinum, taken from soil, was a good source of three different extracellular enzymes, M, N and O. These enzymes hydrolyse polysaccharides in cell walls. The scientists grew P. citrinum in a liquid medium containing cell wall material. Samples of the liquid were removed, and the three enzymes were isolated from the medium. Each enzyme was added to a reaction mixture with the correct substrate. The activity of each enzyme was measured to provide an estimate of the amount of enzyme made by P. citrinum. The results are shown in Table 4.1. The results in Table 4.1 were obtained under optimum conditions for each enzyme. These conditions were not the same for all three enzymes. The scientists did further research so that a solution containing the three enzymes (enzyme mixture) could be used to produce sugars from crop waste as efficiently as possible.