Background on Lactose Intolerance: 1. Can you name the symptoms of lactose intolerance? Bloating, gas, and diarrhea. 2. Do you know what causes lactose intolerance? It’s caused by the malabsorption of lactose in the small intestine and low levels of lactase. Questions 1. Name the monosaccharides and the disaccharides in the image above? Glucose and Galactose are mono. Lactose is a di. 2. What type of chemical reaction converts lactose to glucose and galactose? Hydrolysis. 3. Why do our bodies want to break lactose down into glucose & galactose? Those are simple sugars which we get energy from, they fuel us. 4. Lactase is an enzyme so what type of macromolecule is lactase? (Carbohydrate, lipid, protein, or nucleic acid) It is a protein. 5. There is a capsule, Lactaid, which lactose intolerant individuals take to help them digest (breakdown) lactose. Explain why you would predict that the natural lactose and artificial Lactaid would have a similar shape. The enzyme has a specific molecular structure which allows it to do its job. If they want their Lactaid to do the same job it would have to be a very similar structure. It would have to have a nearly identical shape to function the same as lactose or be isolated lactose itself to work best. 6. What macromolecules provides the instructions to make the protein lactase? (Carbohydrate, lipid, protein, or nucleic acid) It’s LCT gene that provides instructions for making lactase, and the information for making the gene is stores in nucleic acids. 7. Propose a reason why babies can produce lactose but as humans get older, their ability to generate lactose decreases? If you look at our anatomy, we are frugivores, just compare our anatomy to an omnivores and you’ll see. So, when we are babies the mothers milk has the what we need to grow at that stage, but at we mature and no longer are at the stage of breastfeeding we have different needs, so the body gets rid of what we no longer need. Our bodies are more intelligent than our minds and is always trying to communicate to us via symptoms. So, it means we aren’t meant to eat animal products at all, but most people do, which is why there are so many diseases and intolerances.