Thursday and Monday -Digestion

Thanks to Mrs. Saxe for going over BMI with you. Here is a site for you to explore more on BMI. You also went over how the liver is involved in digestion.

How is the liver involved - produces bile (an emulsifier) stored in the gall bladder and moved into the small intestine. The bile increases the surface area of fats by mechanical digestion. Here is a website with an animation on bile and fats (Bile site)

We continued on our journey through the digestive system. We are still in the small intestine.
What is the function of the small intestine? = breakdown of food and absorption of simple sugars, amino acids, fatty acids, nucleic acids, vitamins, and minerals?


Pancreas enzymes (amylase, lipase, protease) and: (where are these used?)
DNAse breaks down DNA into nucleic acids (where does the DNA come from in your food?)
Where are the nutrients then absorbed into? The plasma! since there are capillaries within the Villi in the small intestine.

What are villi? Finger like projections that help increase the surface area to increase nutrient absorption into the blood. Villi have capillaries within them.

Villi have microvilli on them - to increase the surface area even more for nutrient absorption.

How does the digested food move through the small intestine?