Pancreatic lipase: Enzyme biochemistry from the health food store

A remarkable wealth of biochemicals is available in a typical natural food market or even the dietary supplement section of most drugstores. One common supplement, pancreatin ‐ sold as a digestive aid, contains a mixture of pancreatic digestive enzymes: lipase, amylase and protease. Pharmaceutical preparations of pancreatin (pancrelipase) are used to treat conditions that decrease the levels of pancreatic digestive enzymes secreted into the small intestine. All of the enzymes in the dietary supplement provide an opportunity for study and experimentation in the undergraduate teaching laboratory, but one, pancreatic lipase, is exceptionally well suited for a variety of investigations. An olive‐oil emulsion provides substrate and with only a few additional chemicals, any spectrophotometer with a visible light source can be used to perform a simple light scattering assay. Students are first introduced to the action of the enzyme by showing that the addition of soluble pancreatin decreases the turbidity of an emulsion sample. Using a spectrophotometer, students can use reaction rates to calculate enzyme activity. Experimentation can be expanded to include the investigation of how the extracts from other dietary supplements may affect lipase activity, broadening student investigation into the realm of drug discovery. We have shown that investigations centered on lipase work well in the hands of first‐year college students and even upper‐level high school students. With expanded focus, lipase investigations provide an open‐ended project or discovery type laboratory for college students in an upper‐level biochemistry laboratory course, where students learn as much as they can about the enzyme and to isolate and characterize potential inhibitors or activators they discover in dietary supplements. This work was supported by the LVC Chemistry Department.