Question

explain why a glucose test strip may be used to determine the enzymatic activity of lactase

Answer 1

Answer: Lactose is made up of Glucose and Galactose. Lactose is present in milk. The enzyme that breaks down lactose into the two molecules is lactase enzyme.

- Enzymatic activity is used to measure the ability of the enzyme to catalyze the reaction and finally measuring the increase in the product concentration or decrease in the reactant concentration.

- Lactase breaks the lactose into glucose and galactose. Hence enzymatic activity of lactose can be measured by finding out the product concentration particularly glucose.

- The relationship goes like this, the higher the product concentration, lower the enzymatic activity. We can know how much lactose has reacted from the amount of glucose.

- Presence of glucose will turn the strip into shades of brown color. More the amount of glucose darker the colors shade.

Note: We can measure galactose as well but in body it eventually gets converted to glucose.