The study of α-amylase inhibitors and digestive enzymes in insect larvae offers crucial insights into insect physiology and crop protection. Insect larvae rely on α-amylase to hydrolyse starch, a ...

When humans domesticated grains some 12,000 years ago, natural selection began to favor genomes with extra genes encoding for the enzyme amylase, which converts starch to sugar. These extra genes ...

Two new studies found that ancient human ancestors carried a surprising diversity of genes for amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starch. By Carl Zimmer As soon as you put starch in your mouth — ...

During early germination, water uptake activates metabolic pathways that stimulate the production of hydrolytic enzymes like ...

Scientists have suspected that modern humans have more genes to digest starch than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but the amylase locus of the genome is hard to study. Researchers have now developed ...