2.29 Understand the role of digestive enzymes, to include the digestion of starch to glucose by amylase and maltase, the digestion of proteins to amino acids by proteases and the digestion of lipids to fatty acids and glycerol by lipases.

Enzymes, as mentioned before, are biological catalysts. They help break down the food that moves through our digestive system. Different enzymes do different tasks, and break down very specific components of food:

amylase and maltase break down starch into glucose

protease breaks down proteins into amino acids

lipase breaks down lipids into fatty acids and glycerol 

Figure 1: The structure of lipids