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.
TheCoreh 636 days ago [-]
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.
KMag 636 days ago [-]
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.
narag 636 days ago [-]
Riboflavin (B2) means literally "yellow ribose" and ribose has also a curious ethimology: an anagram of arabinose, a compound found in gum arabic.
rvbissell 636 days ago [-]
> turning his urine blue
It was also a minor plot device in one particular episode of MAS*H
636 days ago [-]
justusthane 636 days ago [-]
Every single time I eat beets, I think I'm dying the first time I look in the toilet.
markx2 636 days ago [-]
Years ago, working in a group home for people with learning disabilities (irrelevant to this)
Charge Nurse gets an anguished phone call early morning, at home, from the female overnight staff. She was terrified that she was haemorrhaging.
Charge Nurse asked her to remember what they did yesterday.
"We harvested lots of veg from the garden, we cooked lots of beetroot and we ate lots of beetroot"
Pee went red. No issues.
calamari4065 636 days ago [-]
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.
strangattractor 636 days ago [-]
We need a new word for a "fascinated yet discussed" state of being.
RHSman2 636 days ago [-]
Car Crash Curious
calamari4065 636 days ago [-]
Mildly shocked and disgusted, but in awe of the absolute maniac who makes this his gig.
I respect him for finding a business niche, and I'm severely judging his clientele.
checkyoursudo 629 days ago [-]
Hey, if urine is sterile, then (presumably sterile on the way in) wine should be sterile (on the way out).
gadders 636 days ago [-]
I always thought a great joke product would be some sort of harmless food additive that did nothing but make methane a non-colourless gas.
nxobject 636 days ago [-]
Wait until they start feeding cows that. Might be a decent way to track cowpies from afar. (Hmm, time to think of actual uses...)
eco 636 days ago [-]
Chemists used to spike each others drinks with Methyline Blue as a prank which turns your urine blue in relatively small amounts.
It probably goes without saying that you should not do this.
malfist 636 days ago [-]
And if you decide to do it anyway against recommendation, do note the very small about. It's drops.
And some folks are highly sensitive to it and can die. So just don't.
hinkley 636 days ago [-]
It was a prank, bro!
aclatuts 636 days ago [-]
Beet juice plus antacid is a solid way to urinate red for me.
palemoonale 636 days ago [-]
Username checks out.
rwoerz 636 days ago [-]
Some people can turn urin and saliva red. (Not theirs, others!)
avery17 636 days ago [-]
ICUP funky colors might be true one day!
aaron695 636 days ago [-]
[dead]
lazzlazzlazz 636 days ago [-]
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."
didgeoridoo 636 days ago [-]
[Deleted]
// TODO: Read comments fully before replying.
ziddoap 636 days ago [-]
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.
pmayrgundter 636 days ago [-]
Am I getting this right?
1) bilirubin (from red cell breakdown) from bloodstream excreted into the gut
2) gut biota convert it to urobilinogen via bilirubin reductase
3) urobilinogen -> urobilin spontaneous breakdown (still in gut)
4) urobilin reabsorbed into bloodstream, filtered by kidneys, excreted in urine
If so, why not just leave it in gut for excretion with feces?
or perhaps 2.1) urobilinogen reabsorbed into bloodstream first, then 3). Makes a little more sense
n0us 636 days ago [-]
You should bring it up to the Architecture Committee
nickpinkston 636 days ago [-]
I love the idea that engineering is 80% design and 20% testing, whereas evolution is 0% design and 100% testing.
morkalork 636 days ago [-]
What a bunch of fools they are, forget inefficiencies, they put waste disposal beside the recreational bits!
saagarjha 636 days ago [-]
I mean that’s not really what they were designed for were they
nickpinkston 636 days ago [-]
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.
times_trw 636 days ago [-]
> 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.
protomolecule 636 days ago [-]
"why not just leave it in gut for excretion with feces"
Because it is hard to distinguish it from nutrients?
foxyv 636 days ago [-]
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.
loeg 636 days ago [-]
The gut's ordinary job is to absorb nutrients from digested food.
taeric 636 days ago [-]
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.
TinyRick 636 days ago [-]
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.
FreeFull 636 days ago [-]
Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) is yellow, and when you consume it, the excess ends up going into your urine, making it more yellow (and fluorescent).
notamy 636 days ago [-]
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.
jspash 636 days ago [-]
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?
Podgajski 636 days ago [-]
No, probably not. this enzyme from the bacteria in our gut actually is what makes the colorless precursor into the yellow product.
I can imagine there may be a bacteria that reverses this process. Maybe that’s what’s in the cat spray.
TriangleEdge 636 days ago [-]
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.
calamari4065 636 days ago [-]
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
InSteady 636 days ago [-]
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.
bookofjoe 636 days ago [-]
>The rainbow of urine colors: What's typical, what's not
Great, now I'll wait for the pill that removes that color, will be handy next time I travel thru the desert.
Podgajski 636 days ago [-]
Then you will be drinking urobilirubin. Probably not much better tasting.
maxerickson 636 days ago [-]
Per the article, urobilinogen spontaneously degrades, so a working color changing pill would probably have to turn the urobilin into something else.
pitched 636 days ago [-]
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?
Podgajski 636 days ago [-]
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.
Podgajski 636 days ago [-]
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.
burnerburnson 636 days ago [-]
Nice. One step closer to finding the enzyme that gives urine its delicious flavor.
ChainOfFools 636 days ago [-]
You might want to be more specific, since all mammalian urine derives from more or less the same process, and is consequently all yellow
MrYellowP 636 days ago [-]
I'm confused. Doctors at the general hospital here told me that over ten years ago already in context of a hemolytic anemia.
How is this new?
Steven420 637 days ago [-]
Finally
buggeryorkshire 636 days ago [-]
This discovery a few years earlier would have ruined at least one Frank Zappa song
dreamcompiler 635 days ago [-]
My motto: Just don't eat any snow, period.
hereme888 636 days ago [-]
Huh, and here I assumed we knew this enzyme all along because we know the end-substance.
Bacteria make it. Cool symbiotic relationship.
cushpush 636 days ago [-]
Why piss is yellow?" come on guys
bobse 636 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:15:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
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.
It was also a minor plot device in one particular episode of MAS*H
Charge Nurse gets an anguished phone call early morning, at home, from the female overnight staff. She was terrified that she was haemorrhaging.
Charge Nurse asked her to remember what they did yesterday.
"We harvested lots of veg from the garden, we cooked lots of beetroot and we ate lots of beetroot"
Pee went red. No issues.
Between them and watersports enthusiasts, I'm sure there's a sizable market for multicolored piss
It's on Xitter so it must be true https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/16032553833507389...
I respect him for finding a business niche, and I'm severely judging his clientele.
It probably goes without saying that you should not do this.
And some folks are highly sensitive to it and can die. So just don't.
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).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urobilin
The pathway is basically:
Hemoglobin => Heme => Biliverdin => Bilirubin => Urobilinogen => Urobilin
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."
// TODO: Read comments fully before replying.
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.
1) bilirubin (from red cell breakdown) from bloodstream excreted into the gut
2) gut biota convert it to urobilinogen via bilirubin reductase
3) urobilinogen -> urobilin spontaneous breakdown (still in gut)
4) urobilin reabsorbed into bloodstream, filtered by kidneys, excreted in urine
If so, why not just leave it in gut for excretion with feces?
or perhaps 2.1) urobilinogen reabsorbed into bloodstream first, then 3). Makes a little more sense
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.
Because it is hard to distinguish it from nutrients?
I can imagine there may be a bacteria that reverses this process. Maybe that’s what’s in the cat spray.
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.
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
https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
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.
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.
How is this new?
Bacteria make it. Cool symbiotic relationship.