A question pertaining on testing amylase

[roloddt]

I'm planning on doing a high school project where I'm going to test the amount (or concentration) of amylase present in their saliva along with their speed to eat something, along with their water intake as they eat.

it's a simple lab but, I have no clue on how to measure the amount of amylase in a person's saliva. Any ideas?

[blcr11]

There are two ways to do it that are suitable for high school labs. You can measure the rate of disappearance of starch with the KI/I2 reagent, or you can measure the rate of glucose appearance with Benedict's reagent. You probably can do either method semi-quantitatively just by eye. If you are going to do it quantitatively, it would help to have access to either a colorimeter or spectrophotometer.

Here is one way that does takes both approaches semi-quantitatively:
http://www.biotopics.co.uk/nutrition/amylex.html

There are a couple of J Chem Ed papers that might be useful.

Cochran, Beverly; Lunday, Deborah; Miskevich, Frank. J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 401
Mathews, K. R.; Landmark, J. D.; Stickle D. F. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 702–704.

I could send the pdf files if you don't have access to the journal. PM me an e-mail address.

[jonmoulton]

It might be interesting to compare the amylase activity of human saliva with amylase from a different source, for example malt. I've not done this; has anyone here tried measuring amylase activity in malt?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt