Digestive System Lab

The Digestive System is a vital part for the function of the human body. A group of organs work together to convert food into energy and nutrients to meet the needs of the body. For this lab we were able to illustrate how proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids are digested through the digestive system.

In the digestion of proteins experiments, one will demonstrate the presence if any of proteins or peptides. In test tube one, 4 ml of deionized water and 1 ml of 1% albumin were added. This test tube was kept in room temperature and it was the negative control test tube for digestion. I hypothesized that on test tube one, proteins were going to be present. Since Albumin is a form of protein and it was added to test tube which is the control test

There was a presence of starch in the solution. In test tube two, there was a slight color change to yellow- orange. This proved that since glucose is a monosaccharide it doesn’t go through the color change, showing no starch present. For test tube three changed to a light blue color with a precipitate at the bottom. It didn’t change to the colors that indicated many levels of reducing sugars because there is no reaction when testing Benedict’s reagent with a polysaccharide. Therefore, my hypothesis was wrong. In test tube four, there was a color change to orange with a precipitate at the bottom. The orange color and the presence of a precipitate in the solution proved my hypothesis was correct. Glucose was broken down to reduced

At two minutes the test tube one was lavender and test tube two was light pink. The change in color of test tube two made my hypothesis incorrect. Bile actually caused emulsification, which lead to a faster reaction with lipase (Blake, J., Munoz, K., & Volpe, S., 2015). Test tube 3 and test tube 4 were still blue. At four minutes, test tube one was light pink and test tubes 3 & 4 continued to be blue. My hypothesis for test tube one was correct because test tube did turn into a pink color which indicates positive for fat digestion. In addition, my hypothesis for test tubes 3 and 4 was correct because these two test tubes only showed a slight change of color meaning they tested negative for fat digestion due to the absence of lipase.

For the emulsification part of the experiment, test tube one contained 1 ml of 0.5% bile, 3ml deionized water, and 2 ml of cooking oil. For test tube two, 4 ml of deionized water and 2 ml of cooking were added. I hypothesized that test tube two would contain big globules since only water and cooking oil were added. On the other hand, test tube would contain smaller globules due to the presence of