What is the purpose of bile acids in lipid digestion?

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Hi, everybody. Let's take a look at our next problem. It says true or false. Correct the statement. If it is false, the purpose of bile acids and lipid digestion is to break down fats into amino acids. So hopefully, one thing jumps out at you right away in that our statement says that fats will be broken down into amino acids. So that one at least is pretty straightforward that it is proteins that are broken down into amino acids, not fats fats. So we'll cross out amino acids get broken down into their components of fatty acids and Glycerol. So we know that our statement is false. However, we also need to correct the statement if it is false. So if we just change the statement to the purpose of bio acids and lipid digestion is to break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol, it's still incorrect because this is not the purpose of bile acids. Bile acids actually emulsify fat globules that are in the digestive tract fat, of course, is hydrophobic and the digestive tract is an aqueous environment. So fat tends to form large clumps in the digestive system, which is hard for digestive enzymes to access and it's digestive enzymes that do the chemical breakdown of the fatty acid molecules. So I wrote digestive enzymes do this over by part two of our statement. So bile acids act in a similar way to soap, they have a hydrophobic portion and a hydrophilic portion. So they can surround large fat clumps and break them up into smaller particles. And of course, we can recall that if you're looking at small particles versus large particles, the smaller the particles, the larger surface area to volume ratio. So your big fat clump broken down has a larger surface area. And that allows better access for these digestive enzymes that are going to accomplish the chemical breakdown. So the bile acids do a physical breakdown to smaller fat particles then helping that process of metabolism or chemical breakdown. So our statement is false and then to correct the statement, we would need to say that the purpose of bile acids in lipid digestion is to emulsify fat particles in the digestive tract. And we could go on to add to make it easier for digestive enzymes to break them down into fatty acids. And glycerol. See you in the next video.

What is the purpose of bile acids in lipid digestion?

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Key Concepts

Bile Acids

Emulsification

Lipid Absorption