Question

rewrite this with you own words

Lycopene (figure 1) is a bright red pigment that is found in various vital human organs such as: human liver, colon, and also playing a huge role in our blood. Lycopene is known as antioxidant with characteristics that can reduce cancer, heart disease and age-related eye disorders. Lycopene is also a huge component in the food we eat giving fruits such as: tomatoes, watermelon, and pink grapefruit their bright red color. The effects of lycopene are very important being the most abundant carotenoid in the human body.

Figure 1.   

This report details the extraction of lycopene from tomato paste. Our group conducted this extraction by using acetone and methylene chloride. We successfully extracted the lycopene and tested the TLC to characterize the extraction. After testing we calculated our rf values.

Procedure

For this experiment we used tomato paste to extract the lycopene from. First we added acetone into an Erlenmeyer flask containing the paste to remove water from it. The acetone was filtered and the solid was kept. We transferred the solid into a clean Erlenmeyer flask and added 25 mL of methylene chloride and swirled until we saw a color change. The last step was repeated again adding 10 more mL of methylene chloride. The next step was to add the drying agent to the lycopene mixture. Another clean flask was measured and the lycopene mixture was transferred into that flask. The methylene chloride was left to evaporate for a week and was compared to the initial 25g tomato paste.

Discussion/ Conclusion

Due to minor human error our lycopene came out more the color orange than red. The excess water left in the flask could have been a factor for this error. When we conducted the TLC plate characterization we found that the lycopene traveled farther than the chlorophyll. In further experiments we will used acetone to dry the flask before putting in our solvent.

Answer 1