Question: Whats your latest discoveryabout how our body works

Gemma Sharp answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Well… I’ve discovered that a chemical called lipopolysaccharide (or LPS for short) can make proteins in cells from the womb (or uterus) behave in certain ways.

LPS is found in bacteria, so by adding it to cells from a uterus I can see what the cells do when they think bacteria is nearby.

I’ve found out that a protein called ERK is phosphorylated (which means a phosphate group is added to its chemical structure) when I add LPS to the cells.

So how does this relate to the body? Well, it shows that cells in the uterus are able to respond to bacteria by phosphorylating proteins. Sometimes the uterus can get infected with bacteria during pregnancy, and when that happens the woman usually goes into labour too early. So maybe (probably) phosphorylation of ERK is one of the things that happens to make a woman give birth too early.

That means it might also be one of the things that happens in normal pregnancy to make a woman give birth on time when the LPS/bacteria isn’t present, but that’s something that I still need to investigate 😉

Thanks for your question, it’s a good un! Let me know if you need me to clarify anything I said.