HIV enters the cells of our immune system, replicates its genetic information, and produces new copies of itself, killing the host cells and infecting new ones. HIV requires certain enzymes to catalyze the reactions involved in infecting the body. Hence, if these enzymes could be turned off, then HIV would be unable to reproduce itself and continue an infection. These treatments interfere with enzymes that are needed for HIV to make copies of its genetic information and to cut its proteins to the proper size, two key steps in the virus's attack on the cells of the immune system. At Washington University in St. Louis, this tutorial accompanies a chemical-kinetics experiment in which students determine the rate law for an inorganic reaction by studying the effect of substrate concentrations on the reaction rate.
Students then explore the effect of temperature and a catalyst on the reaction rate.
The tutorial shows students, using an example that students have heard about in the media, that catalysis is not as simple as it might at first seem, and that the catalyst itself can be inhibited in a number of different ways. Click here to view the tutorial.