Congratulations to Sri Vidya Tallavajhula, Sophia Fernandez, and Arushi Biswas, on successfully planning and launching Chundawat Lab’s first hands-on demo activity on enzymes relevant to gut health! The activity was titled ‘Unlocking the Energy Code: All about Carbohydrates & Enzymes’. I also enjoyed participating in this event today afternoon and engaging with the students. Check out photos from the event below.
This outreach event was developed by Sri Vidya and her team of Rutgers School of Engineering SUPER undergraduates this summer at Rutgers. The team successfully developed a simple enzyme assay to detect lactose in various infant and adult food/beverage products (including infant feed formula) using simple over-the-counter reagents. I was very curious about the levels of lactose and human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) in some of the infant formulas since HMOs are more than simple food for bugs. It was interesting to note that one of beverage products was not lactose-free so my students will double check the results and potentially report this unexpected finding to the FDA consumer reports. Don’t always believe what’s on a product label sometimes!
Excellent work by the team led by Sri Vidya explaining relevance of carbohydrates to gut health and role of carbohydrate-active enzymes for complex carbohydrates degradation. We hope to further develop this outreach activity and make it available as a K-12 educational activity in the coming year!
Thanks for funding/support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Rutgers School of Engineering, The Academy at Rutgers for Girls in Engineering & Technology (TARGET), and Rutgers Project SUPER Undergraduate Summer Research Experience Program. In particular, support from NSF was geared towards engineering enzymes for complex HMOs biosynthesis, as well as support of this outreach activity to introduce students to the exciting field of glycosciences and glycoengineering. And finally, thanks to all the rising 9th grade students and budding scientists/engineers that took part in our event today, along with support from the TARGET program today! Special thanks to Aisha Ciafullo and her team of TARGET program student volunteers for their support as well.
