Health ScienceRich#digestive-enzymes#amylase#lipase
Digestive Enzyme Cascade
Salivary amylase in the mouth to pancreatic lipase/protease to small intestine brush-border peptidases: each site adds enzymes as food moves through the GI tract.
A free, animated digestive enzyme cascade you can read here or embed on any website, from Scrollchart.
Digestive Enzyme Cascade
Digestion is a sequential enzymatic disassembly line. Each anatomical region secretes enzymes optimised for the pH at that site and the substrates arriving from the preceding region. Salivary and pancreatic amylases both hydrolyse starch, but pancreatic amylase operates at the much higher concentrations delivered into the duodenum. Pepsin is active at gastric pH 1.5-3.5 and irreversibly inactivated once pancreatic bicarbonate raises pH to 7-8 in the duodenum.
Protein digestion begins with pepsinogen, secreted by gastric chief cells. HCl from parietal cells drops gastric pH below 3, autocatalytically converting pepsinogen to pepsin. In the duodenum, pancreatic proteases (trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase) continue the process; trypsinogen is activated by duodenal enteropeptidase. Brush-border peptidases reduce oligopeptides to di- and tripeptides absorbed via PepT1 transporters.
Fat digestion depends on gastric lipase (active in acid) and pancreatic lipase (dominant, requires colipase and bile salt emulsification). Bile salts from the gallbladder create micelles that dramatically increase lipase surface area access.
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Source & accuracy
This digestive enzyme cascade is an editorial illustration built to represent the concept accurately. Where it shows figures, they are typical or representative values chosen to make the relationship clear, not a single underlying dataset. The diagram and its explainer are reviewed and maintained centrally, and updated over time as understanding improves.
Where each enzyme joins the journey
Digestion is staged along the gut, with each region adding its own enzymes. In the mouth, salivary amylase starts breaking starch into smaller sugars. The stomach contributes pepsin (activated from pepsinogen by acid) to begin protein breakdown. The greatest enzymatic effort comes in the small intestine, where the pancreas delivers amylase, lipase for fats, and proteases such as trypsin and chymotrypsin.
Final steps happen at the brush border of the small intestine lining, where membrane-bound enzymes like maltase, sucrase, lactase, and peptidases finish digestion into the simple sugars, amino acids, and fatty acids the body can absorb.
Why the order is built in
Many digestive enzymes are made and stored as inactive precursors and switched on only at the right site, for example pepsinogen activated by stomach acid and trypsinogen activated in the small intestine. This staging protects the tissues that make the enzymes from being digested themselves and matches each enzyme to the conditions, such as pH, where it works best.
Bile from the liver assists by emulsifying fats so lipase can act efficiently. This is general educational information about normal physiology and not medical advice.
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Reference
What this is
A free, embeddable, animated digestive enzyme cascade for any website.
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Medical educators, Health blogs, Nutrition blogs, Patient-info sites.
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Frequently asked questions
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