Gail Bornhorst designed and built this machine to simulate human digestion, hoping to provide information that will help people decide which foods and preparation methods are best for their health.

This film explores the complex process of human digestion, detailing how food is broken down into molecules by the digestive system. It follows the journey of food from the mouth, where it is chewed ...

Researchers uncover the surprisingly complex evolutionary history of the salivary protein amylase. Historically, the similarity between AMY1 copies has made this stretch of the genome difficult to map ...

A group of researchers has reached deep into the human gut, plucked out a couple enzymes produced by bacteria residing there and determined their biological activities and molecular structures -- ...

Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It’s responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary ...

How do humans digest food? It’s a complicated question, with no easy answer. But in a food engineering lab at UC Davis, a mechanical digestive system is churning out information that may help solve ...