Saliva Enzyme

Saliva lubricates the mouth and moistens food being consumed. Information about the type and taste of food can be provided once the food is broken down and the chemicals within the food can be dissolved. Enzymes within the saliva breakdown and digest carbohydrates before the swallowing of the food (Martini et al., 2015).
2. Saliva is composed of mainly water, buffers that help keep the pH within the mouth to an optimal pH, one that doesn’t denature the enzymes within the saliva (Martini et al., 2015) (Seager & Slabaugh, 2014). The saliva consists of enzymes. Primary enzyme is salivary amylase (Martini et al., 2015) which breaks down starch into simpler sugars. Other enzymes include lysosome, esterases, catalase, maltase and peroxidase (Beal,

The purple colour indicated the presence of starch. The mouth was rinsed with tepid water and saliva was collected in a beaker. The saliva was filtered through a thin layer of cotton wool over a test tube. The cotton wool had to be squeezed to get a few drops of saliva into the test tube. Five ml of starch solution was added to the same test tube using a pipette. One hundred microliters of iodine solution was added to the same test tube using a micropipette. The time taken for the solution to become colourless was noted.
Once the colourless solution was reached, the Benedict test was conducted. One ml of the colourless solution was added to 4 ml of Benedict solution into a test tube. This solution was then moved over the flame of a Bunsen burner (making sure the flame was blue) until the solution came to a boil. The solution was then left to cool and the presence of a brick-red precipitate would indicate the presence of sugars.
The effect of salivary amylase

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Martini, F.H., Nath, J.L. and Bartholomew, E.F. (2015). Fundamentals Of Anatomy & Physiology, 10th ed. San Francisco: Pearson