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
Track those sugars
Fracking for fructose
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