Bile juice contains no digestive enzymes.
While bile juice doesn't contain enzymes, it plays a crucial role in digestion, specifically in the digestion and absorption of fats. Its importance lies in its constituents, namely bile salts (such as sodium taurocholate and sodium glycocholate), bilirubin, and biliverdin. Bile salts act as emulsifiers, breaking down large fat globules into smaller ones. This emulsification process increases the surface area of the fats, making them more accessible to pancreatic lipase (an enzyme secreted by the pancreas that is involved in fat digestion). Without bile, fat digestion would be significantly impaired.
Therefore, although bile juice is essential for fat digestion, it achieves this through emulsification rather than enzymatic action. The enzymes that actually break down fats are secreted by the pancreas.
