PBatoon

Lol...I guess I'll be checking for fart inducing, sweet tasting milk then. Will report qualitative findings soon.

You could look up on youtube what is called "Elephant Toothpase" What it is, is a redox rxn that produces O2 from H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) and KI (potassium iodide). You'd need to be careful though because the type of Hydrogen peroxide the experiment demands is a high concentration that can be corrosive. BUT it does produce an extremely cool visual result.

Thanks for the input Mr. Skeptic. What I meant to say was that I wanted the enzyme to work in the actual milk carton to break down the lactose in vitro (in carton) and produce my own homemade "Lactaid" like milk. Most likely the enzyme will be activated at a specific low pH since I cant really think about any enzymes that work in a broad pH range. I do research in a biochemistry lab so do you happen to know any easy method to test for glucose and galactose? I was thinking I can probably use a diabetic glucose meter to get hard data but then comes the issue if the meter will detect glucose in the presence of blood or not (I dont know how the meter works so maybe I can look it up).

@hoppimike Please please please stop what you are doing! Having someone trying to synthesize this poses many dangers. First of all you dont know how pure your product would be (you dont have any proper lab equipment, analytical machines, etc...), you wont know if the product is a racemic mixture, you dont know the amounts you need to take, AND there is also potential of OD'ing and causing permanent damage. I would agree that the best way to go about it would be the microbiological way, but you would still have to cover the cost to create a strain that will produce that product (not to mention the cost of actually getting competent cells and the dna sequence).

I've recently found out that i've developed lactose intolerance during college and I have finally brought myself to buy some lactase tablets. Anyway, they work great but I was wondering if they are functional not only at 37C but at 1-3C (ave fridge temp). I know they are probably engineered to be stable at low pH and at body temp, but what about in cold temps like the fridge? I figured, I could prolly just crush and drop a lactase tablet into my milk carton and wont have to worry about lactose effects. Plus I would like to save money. Hah. Anyone ever tried to do that themselves?

What methods have you tried so far? You could probably lyse w/ a salt cut and run it through a purification column. But then I realize you're working with extremely small quantities than recombinant expression. So for diatoms I have no idea. What are you trying to purify?