my little sister just informed me that she’s aiming to be the butchest lesbian at her high school
i thought one couldn’t be any butchier than she already is but i was wrong apparently
Scientists think they might have finally found an explanation for why more than one-third of women experience heavy periods each month.
Rather than being related to hormones, a new small study suggests
that low levels of a specific protein in the uterus might be to blame.
While most women lose up to 40 millilitres of blood each period, around 30 percent of women will lose as much as 80 millilitres – or more than a quarter of a cup – at least one cycle throughout their life.
That might not sound like a whole lot, but, trust me, it’s definitely
noticeable when you’re running around trying to get on with work,
school, and generally live life.
Sometimes this heavy bleeding is caused by a physical problem – such as fibroids or endometriosis – but around half the time, doctors have no idea what’s going on, or how to stop it.
“Heavy menstrual bleeding is one of the most common reasons for
referral to a gynaecologist,” lead researcher Jackie Maybin, from the
University of Edinburgh in the UK, told Jessica Hamzelou from New Scientist. “It can have a big impact on a person’s quality of life.”
University of Edinburgh researchers say they’ve now found early evidence that a protein called HIF1, or hypoxia-inducible factor 1, might be linked to heavy bleeding.
One of my favorite things about biology is that there are so many diagrams like this that look like shitposts if you remove any and all context from them
For a while now scientists have been excited by a
gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9 which allows us to very precisely add,
remove or replace specific parts of DNA.
It’s the most efficient, inexpensive and easiest-to-use
gene-editing tool we have ever seen, but until now one thing it hasn’t been
used for is activating switched-off genes.
However scientists at Hokkaido University’s Institute of
Genetic Medicine have developed a way to do just that.
Our genes are controlled by switches called promoters. When
a promoter switch is ‘methylated’ – a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms bind
to it – then it is switched off, or silenced.
To switch a silenced gene back on, first they used CRISPR/Cas9
to cut out the methylated promoter. Then the researchers used a technique called MMEJ
(microhomology-mediated end-joining), to insert a new promoter, replacing
the off-switch with an on-switch.
The scientists tested the tool on two genes and found evidence
that both were switched on and working robustly once the promoter was swapped. It worked
so well that one of the expressed genes made the cell differentiate from a stem
cell to a neuron in a week.
In the picture above, you can see human stem cells expressing protein from the activated gene, in red. Cell nuclei are coloured blue.
The team believe their tool has wide potential for
manipulating gene expression, creating genetic circuits, or engineering cell
fates.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 