If you read this blog regularly, we've been a little lax in posting lately. Really, there's hasn't been anything reported that's interesting in science going on. I know, you'd think that was impossible.
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If you've ever taken a chemistry class, you've probably gotten a whiff of H2S, or hydrogen sulfide. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it smells like rotten eggs. I bet you know what I'm talking about now.
In low doses, H2S gas is tolerable. Hydrogen sulfide is naturally occurring, so your body can process lower levels. In high doses, it will kill you. The toxicity comes from the gas binding to your enzymes instead of oxygen. And you sorta need oxygen to live.
Scientists are now experimenting with the deadly gas in order to stop cell growth and further the field of emergency medicine. A recent breakthrough has been that death isn't caused be oxygen deprivation directly, but falling oxygen levels set off deadly reactions. However, hydrogen sulfide can replace the oxygen and stop the reactions before they occur.
Experiments with fish embryos showed that removing oxygen from their cells left them in suspension. When oxygen was added back, they cells simply continued to grow as normal without any difference. Next, fruit flies were gassed with H2S. They also stopped moving but started up again over oxygen was added back.
The theory is that we need at least 21% oxygen to live (this is the composition of the air we breathe) and die at 5%. However, at .1% cells appear to simply stop, not die. As you can imagine, this can revolutionize medicine as we no longer need to race against time, but just pause it. However, research is having a problem achieving this suspended animation with big animals. Currently, they are developing an injectable drug that will dissolve in the blood to release H2S.
As reported from CNN.
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