Lactase Synthesis Lab Report

Introduction Most mammals are initially born with the ability to break down the polysaccharide, lactose into smaller monosaccharides but at an early age, usually as the child starts to rely less on their mother for direct nurturance, this ability ceases. This inability to break down lactose is known as lactase non-persistence. Lactase Non-persistence is the wild type in the population surprisingly even though a vast majority of the population is lactase non persistent. Individuals with the ability to digest the lactose found in milk are considered lactase persistent or lactose tolerant. The LCT is responsible for encoding the production of lactase the enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose. However, ultimately the gene that controls

Being knowledgeable about whether one is lactose intolerant is important because the consumption of milk by an individual who lacks the production of lactase results in several gastral intestinal complications. Therefore, it is imperative that an individual possess a method of understanding whether they can digest lactose or not. Determining one’s genotype is a scientific method that provides an individual with a near certain conclusion of whether they are lactose in tolerant or not. This can be achieved by gaining even a small portion of DNA, running a polymerase chain reaction, therefore amplifying the gene of interest and allow researchers to run such DNA though a gel electrophoresis process that which ultimately will provide the necessary information to tell an individual if they are one of three outcomes: homozygous wild type (lactase non-persistent), homozygous mutant (lactase persistent), or heterozygous (lactase persistent). The polymerase chain reaction is successful at replicating and amplifying by first breaking the hydrogen bonds holding the two strands together at their complementary bases. Next, the strands that will be used to produce the new strand known as the template strand are fixed with two primers (one primer for each

Next we vortexed a Chelex solution to ensure full mixture then added the solution to the tube containing the isolated cheek cells. The purpose of Chelex solution is to bid metal ions within the solution ultimately, ensuring that the metal ions do not interfere later in the experiment. After, we incubated the DNA plus Chelex solution for 10 minutes and then quickly placed the solution on ice following. The incubation is effective at lysing the cells therefore breaking the cell membrane After incubation, the DNA plus Chelex solution was centrifuged one final time separating the remains of the Chelex and cell debris and the supernatant fluid which is ultimately our genomic DNA. Leaving the pellet containing the non-genomic DNA portion in the bottom of tube, we transferred the genomic DNA to to another microfuge