PHYSIOLOGY OF DIGESTION: Chemical Digestion of Carbohydrates – Benedict’s Test

Chemical Digestion

• It is the process where acids, bases and enzymes released into the digestive track responds to
semi-solid food lumps.

• It is brought about by the hydrolysis of starch into disaccharides (maltose) only by salivary
amylase (or ptyalin) present in the saliva. One liter of saliva is released in a day. Hydrolysis of
starch prevents its accumulation between the teeth.

• It is more important than mechanical digestion as it is how we get our energy.

• When initiating the chemical digestion process, the saliva secreted helps in softening the food
into semi-solid lump. Salivary amylase enzyme helps in digesting the carbohydrates and mucus.
This way the food particles are made finer for swallowing and chemical breakdown in the
digestive track. The food thus made into semi solid lump is then pushed through the throat and
esophagus.

Salivary Amylase

• An enzyme that breaks down starch to sugar

• Ptyalin – salivary amylase in the mouth

• Works as a catalyst

• Amylase digests starch by catalyzing hydrolysis, which is splitting by the addition of a water
molecule. Therefore starch plus water becomes maltose (which is equivalent to two joined
glucose molecules). Body temperature is the optimal heat for the best reaction of amylase.

Benedict’s Test

• Also called as Benedict’s solution or Benedict’s reagent

• Named after an American chemist, Stanley Rossiter Benedict (1884-1936)

• Used as a test for the presence of reducing sugar (sugars with a free aldehyde or ketone group)
including glucose, lactose, and fructose, but not sucrose. All monosaccharides are reducing
sugars; they all have a free reactive carbonyl group.  Some disaccharides have exposed carbonyl
groups and are also reducing sugars.  Other disaccharides such as sucrose are non-reducing
sugars and will not react with Benedict's solution.  Starches are also non-reducing sugars.

• Contains blue copper sulfate (CuSO4)

• One liter of Benedict's reagent can be prepared from 100 grams of anhydrous sodium
carbonate, 173 g of sodium citrate and 17.3 g of copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate. It is often used
in place of Fehling's solution.
Results and Discussion

Set-up Number Benedict’s test observation

C1(water + starch) +
C2(salivary amylase + starch) ++++
C3(salivary amylase + HCl + starch) ++
C4(boiled salivary amylase + starch) -

C1 - Starch is a non-reducing sugar, so it will not react to Benedict’s solution. But since it has water,
starch can undergo HYDROLYSIS, which is splitting by the addition of water molecule. Therefore starch
plus water becomes maltose (which is equivalent to two joined glucose molecules).

C2 - It gives red orange color because of the presence of large amount of reducing sugar(maltose).
Salivary amylase digested the starch to maltose, which reacted to Benedict’s solution to form red orange
precipitate.

C3 - Like C2, salivary amylase digested the starch to maltose. But since HCl is present, the color becomes
yellow, lighter than C2. This is because HCl destroyed some salivary amylase, so the amount of salivary
amylase is lesser.

C4 - The result is negative although the solution contains salivary amylase. This is because salivary
amylase was boiled, making the enzyme to be denatured.

Why use Benedict’s Solution?

• Because Benedict’s solution contains copper sulfate(CuSO 4). CuSO4 reacts with electrons of the
reducing sugar to form cuprous oxide (Cu 2O), a red-brown precipitate.

CuSO4 à Cu2+ + SO4-

Cu2+ + reducing sugar(electron donor)à Cu+

Cu+ à Cu2O(precipitate)

Effect of Temperature on Salivary Amylase

• At low temperatures, the rate of enzyme reaction is very slow. The molecules have low kinetic
energy and collisions between them are less frequent. After 40, the rate of reaction starts
to decrease. This is because the increase in temperature after 40 does not increase the kinetic
energy of the enzyme but instead, it denatures the enzyme.

Why do we have to heat the solution after adding Benedict’s solution?

• It requires energy for the Cu2+ ions in the Benedict’s solution to be reduced to Cu +. Even when
the reducing sugar is present, energy is required to remove the electron from the valence shell.
This is why heat is required.

Conclusion

Salivary amylase is very important in digestion because it breaks down carbohydrates such as
starch into simpler sugar like maltose. There are optimum pH and temperature that should be
considered in order to achieve maximum enzymatic activity. Too low or too high of these two factors
will denature the enzyme, making it deactivated.