what is amylase used for? amylase is an enzyme used to break up starch but what can be made with it?
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Amylase (EC 3.2.1.1 ) (CAS# 9014-71-5) is a digestive enzyme classified as a saccharidase (an enzyme that cleaves polysaccharides). It is mainly a constituent of pancreatic juice and saliva, needed for the breakdown of long-chain carbohydrates (such as starch) into smaller units.\n\nAmylase is also synthesized in the fruit of many plants during ripening, causing them to become sweeter, and also during the germination of cereal grains. Grain amylase is key to the production of malt.\n\nI purchase a papaya enzyme from Puritan's Price, seems to really help when I eat something I have probs digesting.
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The enzyme maltase that is used to reduce maltose is produced in the small intestine. That is where the breaking down of maltose occours because the pH is too low, i.e., it is too acidic in the stomach for any digestion too occur. \n\nRemember that for enzymes to work, there needs to be a specific enviornment.
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The same way that crushing wheat releases starch. The starch is contained within the seed as starch granules, but conatined by a layer of cellulose. By crusing the barley or wheat seeds you crack that cellulose layer and release the starch.
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your body makes enzymes (special proteins) to break down carbs/sugars (amylases), proteins (proteases), and fats (lipases)\n\nLactose, a sugar, is broken down by lactase, and if there's something wrong with it, only your absorption of lactose is affected. Other nutrients have other ways of being absorbed that have nothing to do with lactase.
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Salivary amylase catalyses the breakdown of starch (and glycogen) into maltose.\nThe process of digestion in the mouth is only brief because the masticated food is soon swallowed into the stomach.\nThe hydrochloric acid in the stomach stops any further digestion of starch.\nOnce the stomach contents enter the small intestine, pancreatic juices both neutralise the stomach acid and supply more enzyme - pancreatic amylase.\nSo the digestion of starch (and glycogen) is completed in the small intestine.
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Plants store glucose as the polysaccharide starch. Starch can be separated into two fractions--amylose and amylopectin. Natural starches are mixtures of amylose (10-20%) and amylopectin (80-90%).\n\nAmylose in starch is responsible for the formation of a deep blue color in the presence of iodine. The iodine molecule slips inside of the amylose coil.\n\nIodine is not very soluble in water, therefore the iodine reagent is made by dissolving iodine in water in the presence of potassium iodide. This makes a linear triiodide ion complex with is soluble. The triiodide ion ion slips into the coil of the starch causing an intense blue-black color.
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The ability to breakdown cellulose is not possessed by mammals. Typically, this ability is possessed only by certain bacteria (which have specific enzymes) like Cellulomonas etc, and which are often the flora on the gut walls of ruminants like cows and sheep, or by fungi, which in nature are responsible for cycling of nutrients. The enzymes utilized to cleave the glycosidic linkage in cellulose are glycoside hydrolases including endo-acting cellulases and exo-acting glucosidases. Such enzymes are usually secreted as part of multienzyme complexes that may include dockerins and cellulose binding modules.
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An enzyme is a protein that catalyzes, or speeds up, a chemical reaction.\nEnzymes are essential to sustain life because most chemical reactions in biological cells would occur too slowly, or would lead to different products without enzymes\n\nLike all catalysts, enzymes work by providing an alternate pathway of lower activation energy of a reaction, thus allowing the reaction to proceed much faster. Enzymes may speed up reactions by a factor of many millions. An enzyme, like any catalyst, remains unaltered by the completed reaction and can therefore continue to function. Because enzymes do not affect the relative energy between the products and reagents, they do not affect equilibrium of a reaction.
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A low pH slows down the enzyme activity. The enzyme present in the stomach is ptyalin. When ptyalin is inactivated, it cannot function.\n\nA little fact of enzyme:\nEnzymes are biological catalysts made of protein. They alter the rate of chemical reactions without themselves being chemically changed at the end of the reaction.\n\nEnzyme combine with the substrate (starch) to form a enzyme-substrate complex. After that, it breaks up into smaller products. The reaction does not change the surface configuration on the enzyme, and therefore can be used to catalyze another reaction. Smaller products makes digestion easier.\n\nSo, when pytalin (enzyme) is inactivated, it cannot go through the procedure as described above.
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You don't. Enzymes break down food particles so that cells can use them for energy.
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Bodies simplest defense against invading bacteria.\n\nLysozymes are enzymes that help break down other bacteria, essentially destroying them. Found in mucous secretions most commonly in tears and saliva.
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Enzymes are Proteins and Proteins are made of Amino Acids.\nCo-enzymes that help Enzymes function are made of vitamins.\nThere are some important conditions for Enzymes to be able to function:\n1)They only function in liquid areas.\n2)Each Enzyme has it's own distinctive shape that let's function with only one sort of matter.\n3)Enzymes are very sensitive towards the temperature of the surrounding environment. For example the enzymes in our body can not function very well when the body temperature goes higher than 38 or 39.\n4)Enzymes are very sensitive towards the PH of their surrounding area. \nRemember this: Enzymes help chemical reactions happen faster but they will not be used during this reaction.
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Yeast make alcohol by trying to metabolize sugar under anaerobic conditions.  But the enzymes that they have are designed to metabolize certain sugars with specific molecular structures.  If the sugar isn't the right type, the yeast cannot ferment the sugar.  They include things like lactose and dextrines.\n\nAll sugars are of the CnOnH(2n+2), like C6O6H14 is glucose.  But the shapes can differ greatly, or the sugars can polymerize to form what we call complex carbohydrates.  Even in the polymerization, only certain types of enzymes can de-polymerize the chain back into sugar.  If you take amylose and amylopectin and make a chain in one direction, you get starch, which our body can break down.  But if you polymerize beta glucose, we cannot digest it because it doesn't fit into the active site of the enzyme that breaks it down.  This gives cellulose, which we call dietary fiber because our inability to digest it makes it sweep through our system.  Cows are likewise unable to digest cellulose by themselves, but they have symbiotic bacteria living in their gut that can.  Without that bacteria, they could never survive on grass (just as we can't).  When a calf is born, it will instinctivly eat its mother's feces in order to get a supply of bacteria that can digest cellulose for it and turn it into something they can metabolize (glucose).\n\nHere's another gross little factoid: humans can digest starch, but yeast cannot.  They can only digest simple sugars, not complex carbohydrates.  If you want to make beer out of grain, you have to find a way to break down the starch in the grain into simple sugar.  One way is malting--you let the grain start to germinate by soaking it in water for a few days, and it will begin to create enzymes that breakdown the starch.  Then you roast it, and you'll have sugary malt that yeast can metabolize.  In Japan, when they first started brewing sake, they did not have the malting process.  Instead, they used the enzymes in our saliva.  If you suck on a piece of uncooked pasta for a while, the enzymes in your saliva will begin to breakdown the starch ina you'll tase sweetness.  In Japan, this meant that they had people chewing up and spitting out the grain prior to fermentation!
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Enzymes are catalysts that speed up chemical reactions \n\nLipase- is an enzyme that is used by the body to break down dietary fats into an absorbable form\nPepsin- enzyme is produced in the mucosal lining of the stomach that acts to degrade protein\nAmylase- is a digestive enzyme classified as a saccharidase -an enzyme that cleaves polysaccharides.\nThe sugar maltose is made from two glucose molecules bonded together. The enzyme maltase is shaped in such a way that it can break the bond and free the two glucose pieces. The only thing maltase can do is break maltose molecules, but it can do that very rapidly and efficiently.
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False.\n\nStarch is a polysaccharide (chain of many glucose molecules).  But it does serve as energy storage for plants.\n\nAnd gibbie99 is wrong.  Animals, including humans, can digest starch just fine.  Potatoes, cereal, pasta all contain starch and we get energy from them (hence can break it down).  Cellulose is the polysaccharide that some animals can not break down.  We do not have enzymes to properly break down the way the glucose molecules are connected.
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Digestive system starts in mouth with the help of enzyme,salivary amylase which is used to start the digestion of carbonhydrate,it digests the starb into maltose..but not finish yet,it will be continued in duodenum...it is chewed and swallowed into the body through oesphagus with the help of a process called peristalsis,muscular contration...when it reach the stomach,the glands on the stomach wall will be stimulated and they will produce gastric juice which consists of hydrochloric acid (which is used to kill the bacteria on the food),pepsin (which is used to digest protein into the polypeptide),renin (which is used to coagulate the liquid milk protein caseinogen into solid form casein) and mucus too to smoothen the movement of the chyme....when the pyloric spintcher open,the chyme will flow into duodenum where pancreatic juice and bile react on it...bile is secreted through the liver and store in the gall bladder...it is used to emulsify the lipids into oil droplets so that it can be digested more efficiently...it is also used to neutralise the acidic properties of the chyme...pancreatic juice is secreted by the pancreas which consists of pancreatic amylase,trypsin and lipase...Pancreatic amylase complete the digestion of the starch into maltose...trypsin digests the polypeptides into peptides whereas the lipase complete the digestion of the lipids into one glycerol molecule and three fatty acids....then it flows into the ileum and intestinal juice is secreted right there to digest what is left behind.. it secrets erepsin and maltase...erepsin is used to digest the peptides into amino acid while maltase digests the maltose into two glucose...in fact the intestine will secret the essential enzyme to digest the entire starch such as sucrase to digest sucrose and lactase to digest lactose...it depends...
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Starch is a natural polymer.  It won't dissolve until you start breaking the bonds joining the monomer units (beta glucose, if I recall correctly).