Can we use this to change the color? I bet some people would pay serious money if they could urinate in different colors for fun, or even use it as an indicator of some sort.
There are many foods that can change urine color, notably beets and some artificial food dyes.
This is actually a common scare for parents when their kids suddenly pee in a different color, and later they find out they had a strong colored food at school, or at a friend's place.
First time I took a vitamin B supplement, I had brief concern before remembering that I had just started taking vitamin B and searched [vitamin B bright urine].
Don't do this, but I read online about some chemist getting pranked by his daughter putting Prussian blue in his coffee, turning his urine blue to blue-green.
I heard a story a while ago about a guy who kept going to the doctor for UTIs. Turns out he was using a catheter to fill his bladder with wine and certain people were paying a lot of money to have him piss wine into their glass.
Between them and watersports enthusiasts, I'm sure there's a sizable market for multicolored piss
I don’t know if I am disgusted , amazed at such a great idea and shocked somebody would do such thing even after getting sick repeatedly. It is a new level of debauchery for sure.
I'm not disagreeing with this article (I know nothing of this field) but this Wiki article and many others explicitly state that Urobilin[1] is the compound that makes urine yellow.
The posted article states: "Urobilin has long been linked to urine's yellow hue, but the research team's discovery of the enzyme responsible answers a question that has eluded scientists for over a century."
So what exactly was discovered? It sounds like "what makes urine yellow" was not discovered, but instead "what enzyme makes Urobilin" (or something like that).
The general pathway has been known for a while and basically got Hans Fischer the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1930. What was not known was the enzyme that converted Bilirubin to Urobilinogen. Previously we said it was just "bacteria."
Parent comment included that exact sentence as a part of their question. I'm not sure why you think quoting the same thing again would provide an answer.
To answer the parent comment: The enzyme discovered is what converts bilirubin into urobilinogen, which degrades into urobilin, so your guess was along the correct lines.
I think it's more that the users have historically been highly motivated and the affordances provided are optimized for broad accessibility, not core user UX.
Either way, most users appeared highly engaged with the product and attempt repeat use without high churn, albeit with a lower Time on Site than the user generally wishes.
> Please note that homo sapiens sapiens is EOL and will not receive any security updates or bug fixes. Please update to homo sapiens sapiens sapiens as soon as possible.
Probably because the gut keeps picking up all the urobilinogen. Kinda like a hoarder when you throw their stuff out. You need another way to process that re-uptake now that it's been converted by the bacteria. Kidneys just happened to be the best man for the job.
I confess I assumed this would be something that was already known. Neat to see it is a new discovery. The story makes it more of a validation than a surprising discovery, but still good work.
Does anyone know if this enzyme is present in B vitamins or produced by the gut biome due to excessive intake of B vitamins (B-2 and B-12 specifically)? In my experience, an excess of B vitamins causes the urine to turn yellow (independent of hydration level) and was curious if this enzyme plays into that at all.
Riboflavin (B2) is a bright yellow and fluorescent under UV light. B12 is red and aiui it takes a LOT of B12 to turn urine red. This happens because both are water-soluble.
Does pet urine spray work differently? It instantly removes the colour and it's been on the shelves for years. Did they know the secret? Or does this discovery just mark the formal identification of the specific enzyme?
Headlines like this remind me of how little is known about the human body. It makes me question the medicine field as a whole.
I hope one of the next tech booms will be bio hacking. Once bio hacking components are accessible and commercially available, who knows what will be possible. I find it incredible the human biology can make super accurate, specific, and precise components.
I think about this all the time. There's a very good reason we call cellular processes molecular machines. Your cells are filled with molecular machines that assemble proteins one molecule at a time. Your cells can synthesize any protein and lots of other molecules besides.
It's not unreasonable to think that we could somehow insert RNA into cells to have them produce medication locally. Or introduce and engineered cell that produces highly specific molecular machines that break down insulin or toxins or repair nerves or all sorts of things.
SciFi authors have been writing for ages about nanobot cultures in your body maintaining your health and physique, modifying the endocrine system, all sorts of things. It's becoming more and more clear to me that these nanobots will most likely not be artificial mechanical machines, but purely biological molecular machines produced and controlled by engineered cells.
When you get down to it, RNA in itself is an absolutely incredible machine. RNA can be formed into structures like proteins that do work on other molecules. RNA can build a machine out of RNA that builds copies of itself!
Biology is just insane on the atomic to molecular scale. Plants manipulate individual protons during photosynthesis! There's a whole active mechanism with rotating parts that pump protons across a membrane. It's incredible that biology can do things like this, and we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible.
Very soon we'll be able to start engineering these molecular machines. The possibilities are nearly endless. How about a self-replicating enzyme that breaks down plastics? Release it into the oceans and eliminate microplastic pollution. Enzymes that convert oils and lipids into hydrocarbon fuel. Maybe we could even produce bacteria that fix CO2 into something inert.
When we gain the ability to manipulate matter on this scale, a whole lot of absolutely incredible things suddenly become easy
One terrifying prospect of this idea of using molecular machinery to produce any protein is we could inadvertently fuck up and end up producing prions. Not that it's not a super cool idea worth exploring, but still, this stuff is mind-blowingly complex and we surely have a LOT to learn.
Not going to pretend I understand, but, it’s interesting that one step in the process relies on gut microbes to create a thing. And that the result of that one microbe being missing is jaundice? Where do all these random (but deadly important) microbes even come from?
No, missing the bacteria alone won’t cause jaundice since a lot of the bilirubin will just be extracted from the feces as well.
You need to have high levels of bilirubin being created or a failing liver that can not process it and pass it off into the intestine.
If anything if you’re drinking the same amount of water and your urine turns more yellow, it probably means that you’re producing more bilirubin.
But I don’t know why this is new, I’ve known this intuitively, watching my own body process and health and diet, and noticing that when I excrete more bile, my urine turns more yellow. As does my feces.
Also, they got Microbiome creates a lot of things. A ton of things.
If you want to go for a real journey, just look at the short chain fatty acids that the Microbiome produces and their effect on water called g protein coupled receptors.
