The process by which bile acts on fat so enzymes can attack the fat is known as?

Answer 1

Bile is an important player in the digestive system largely because it helps to digest fats.

In the gut, fats exist as relatively large globs that cannot be absorbed. To prepare fats for absorption, they must first be broken down into their component parts. An enzyme called lipase ("lip-", fat; "-ase", break down) is capable of breaking down the large fat globs. However, lipase acting by itself would be very inefficient because these large fat globs have a very low surface area-to-volume ratio. This means that the globs have a lot of fat in them, but not much surface for lipase to work on. Lipase can only act efficiently on fat globs with high surface area-to-volume ratios.

This is where bile comes in. The major players in bile that help achieve a high surface area-to-volume ratio are called bile salts. Bile salts are amphipathic -- they have both water-soluble (hydrophilic) and water-insoluble (hydrophobic) regions. The water-soluble regions are repelled from fats, but the water-insoluble regions are strongly attracted to fats in the gut. This arrangement allows bile salts to associated with one part of the fat glob and then cause the region nearby to break off. Bile salts do this by forming a spherical structure around globs of fat in the gut; this spherical structure (in combination with a few other proteins that get added to it) is called a micelle.

By forming micelles, bile salts break up (or emulsify) large fat particles into smaller ones. The proteins associated with the micelle also attract the digestive enzyme lipase, which breaks down the fats inside the micelle into their component parts for absorption in the gut.

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Answer 2

Bile acts as an emulsification agent on fat (emulsify means to break apart), so that enzymes can break the fat molecules into absorb-able size pieces. If the fat is not separated, the enzymes have a hard time digesting the fat, especially if there is a large amount present.