Following fructose through the body
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article "Small intestine is first stop for fructose."
Educator Guide: Small Intestine is First Stop for Fructose
SWEET TOOTH Sucrose, or table sugar, is made from a mixture of fructose and glucose. The body handles these two sugar molecules differently, but new research in mice suggests the small intestine helps the liver by taking the first crack at metabolizing fructose.
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY/FLICKR (CC BY-SA 2.0)
About this guide
The article “Small intestine is first stop for fructose” describes recent findings in mice suggesting that fructose is mainly metabolized by the small intestine instead of the liver when the animals ingest a moderate amount of the sugar. The result challenges previously-held ideas about how the body metabolizes fructose. Students can focus on information reported in the article, follow connections to earlier articles about fructose and pursue cross-curricular connections in physical sciences and chemical and biological sciences, as well as engineering and experimental design. In a related activity, students can measure the enzymatic breakdown of table sugar to fructose and glucose, and build molecular models of fructose and other sugars.
This Guide Includes:
Fructose’s many faces
Students will search the Science News archive for other stories about the role of fructose.
Track those sugars
These discussion prompts ask students about how isotopes can be used to label and track chemical molecules, and about sugars and the enzymes they interact with.
Fracking for fructose
Students will learn more about the enzymatic modification of sugars through hydrolyzing sucrose and to build molecular models of fructose, glucose, sucrose and a common artificial sweetener, sucralose.