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[forsaken1111]

Also, adding sugar to bread-and-butter. Try it!

Other people do this too?!

[Rose]

Yes, but can you make a chocolate soufflé in thirty seconds?

Just EXTERMINATE

[Sergarr]

Also, adding sugar to bread-and-butter. Try it!

Other people do this too?!

It was apparently a very popular recipe in Soviet Union, due to oftentimes-present lack of real sweets. The more you know!

[Sheb]

It's common in Belgium with brown beet sugar (that we call cassonade).

[scrdest]

Also, adding sugar to bread-and-butter. Try it!

Other people do this too?!

It was apparently a very popular recipe in Soviet Union, due to oftentimes-present lack of real sweets. The more you know!

My mum had an even more barebones version of that in her childhood - water-sprinkled bread with sugar.

[Frumple]

... sugar is key ingredient to best grilled cheese sammich, yes. Sugar and bread is good. Sugar and bread and other stuff is also good. Lately I've been doing toast and cane syrup and cinnamon. Is delicious.

Sugar in general, really. So bad for you, so good to you ♥

[Solifuge]

So... how about them FOXL2 and DMRT1 genes?

Folks who think it'd be neat for people to be able to choose their biological sex take note; apparently Testes can become Ovaries, and Ovaries can become Testes (complete with the expected hormones, and the possibility of even reproductive cells), based on the balance of two competing sex-determination proteins coded by these genes. And this switch can happen even in adulthood, across most (all?) species that have sexes, and in a reversible fashion.

Spoiler: Some of the Science in question (click to show/hide)

Mammalian sex determination initiates in the fetal gonad with specification of bipotential precursor cells into male Sertoli cells or female granulosa cells. This choice was long presumed to be irreversible, but genetic analysis in the mouse recently revealed that sexual fates must be maintained throughout life. Somatic cells in the testis or ovary, even in adults, can be induced to transdifferentiate to their opposite-sex equivalents by loss of a single transcription factor, DMRT1 in the testis or FOXL2 in the ovary.

FOXL2 versus SOX9: A lifelong ‘‘battle of the sexes’’
DMRT1 prevents female reprogramming in the postnatal mammalian testis

Normally, bodies have both of these genes coding for their proteins, but a competitive feedback system keeps it tipped in favor of whichever protein is currently in dominance. However, by deactivating one of these genes, or potentially by using supplements to make the other protein more prevalent in the bloodstream, it tips a feedback system in favor of that protein's production, causing that person's jumblies to become the other kind of jumblies; Ovaries to become Testes (FOXL2 > DMRT1) or Testes to become Ovaries (DMRT1 > FOXL2). Looking at other studies, it's an old biological mechanism, probably as old as Sex Differentiation itself, since it's found as far back as our common ancestor with flatworms and insects. I'd hazard a guess the organisms that can switch their expressed sex during their lifetime (lots of fish and amphibians, and some insects) evolved a way to control this system. One theory is that this competetive feedback loop that keeps production tipped strongly in favor of one or the other separately from their genome seems to be a failsafe for keeping biological sex binary, and in keeping mutations in sex-determination from producing sterile intersex adults in some cases.

Apart from knocking out these genes to induce a sex change, I believe this means we could create a sort of medication to switch the gender expression of a person's reproductive organs back and forth, along with the appropriate hormonal effects, by synthesizing these proteins artificially (say, bacterial protein factories with FOXL2/DMRT1 genes inserted). I am excited for the future when choosing what biological sex you want to express is a simple thing, but some of the other possibilities are pretty crazy and cool too.


A few possible applications for this research, off the top of my head:

• We could treat infertility related to intersex conditions, as well as mutations of FOXL2/DMRT1 that produce malfunctioning versions of these proteins. A lot of people deal with infertility, and this could be a major breakthrough in treatment.
  
  
• Same-sex partners looking to have children could potentially use a therapy like this to switch their junk to opposite-sex junk temporarily, make their own complimentary gametes, and use in-vitro techniques to produce biological offspring as though they were opposite-sex. So you could literally have 2 biological dads/moms. Raises some ethical concerns, in that 2 female parents would only produce female children, and 2 male parents would result in 25% of pregnancies being non-viable YYs. I've no idea if male Y-Chromosome eggs would be viable either, if their cellular functions need genes found on the X Chromosome... but even if so, it still would create new options for same-sex couples.
  
  
• It enables people, especially younger people, to choose the sex their body will express physically in a way that doesn't require hormone supplements. Transgender persons could switch their body's physical sex, even keep their existing jumblies, and switch them into other-sex mode. For post-puberty trans-folks, this wouldn't remove most of their existing physical characteristics, but it would induce new hormone-based secondary sex characteristics like voice-dropping and facial hair, or breast development, etc. Also, paired with advances in surgery, they could get fully functional reproductive organs that match the sex they identify with too.
  
  
• People could potentially create an in-vitro child entirely by themselves. Said child would be a complete genetic clone. ._.
  

[Sergarr]

• People could potentially create an in-vitro child entirely by themselves. Said child would be a complete genetic clone. ._.
  

I don't think genetics work like that.

[Solifuge]

That's based on the possibility that transdifferentiated Testes/Ovaries can be coaxed to produce sex cells in addition to hormones (which is yet to be tested)... but why do you say that? If your body could produce an egg and have it extracted, then produce sperm, and have that extracted, then combine both in an in-vitro environment and implant that, wouldn't you be passing on two half-copies of your own genome, with everything but mutations during genetic recombination rendered moot? IE. a genetic clone, as happens in some female-only species?

[forsaken1111]

• People could potentially create an in-vitro child entirely by themselves. Said child would be a complete genetic clone. ._.
  

I don't think genetics work like that.

I'm pretty sure it does actually.[/list]

[Sheb]

Yeah, then your kid would be a super-inbred.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, then your kid would be a super-inbred.

Depends on what you mean by that. Technically yes, you would be 'inbred' as inbreeding is the mating of humans who are closely related genetically. It's hard to get closer related than that.

But the created individual would genetically just be a copy of yourself.

[Solifuge]

Certainly not arguing in favor of it here, but a footnote about inbreeding; it doesn't magically make your genes bad. It just raises the likelihood that recessive traits will be expressed, because genetically similar parents are more likely to share recessive traits, and pass them on, whereas dissimilar parents have a higher chance of passing a dominant trait to cover that up. And some recessive traits are harmful, like hemophilia, etc. But in the case of a self-pregnancy, the offspring would be genetically the same as the parent. So definitionally Super Inbred, but... what does that even mean, at that point?

[scrdest]

Yeah, then your kid would be a super-inbred.

And likely wouldn't be a clone anyway, it'd be a perfect homozygote half of the time, and messed up epigenetically the other half of the time. Which would be a *bit* of a genetic difference between the two of you. And also probably would die in utero.

E: Soli, you don't grok genetics. That kid would, best case, be your clone with massive epigenetic disorders.

[penguinofhonor]

.