There are contraceptives that taken continuously permit women to skip periods. There are also parts of antibodies known as aptamers that glom onto particular proteins. I think that linking an aptamer to a contraceptive chemical would make it so that micrograms of absorbed material that concentrates at the reproductive tract would make it possible to modify reproduction all year, omitting menstrual periods.
-- beanangel, Jan 07 2017

How did I know this was going to be [beany]?

Protein aptamers will survive for a few hours in a warm, wet proteolytic environment. Few days tops. If you used something like nucleotide-analog aptamers to avoid this problem, you might at least keep them stable enough to give your idea time to fail for other more interesting reasons.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2017


This makes me wonder if fluorinated aptamers (replace H with F) would last longer. teflonish protein.
-- beanangel, Jan 07 2017


Longer action?
-- po, Jan 07 2017


//This makes me wonder if fluorinated aptamers (replace H with F) would last longer. //

They almost certainly would. However:

(a) There is no way to evolve fluorinated aptamers, as far as I am aware, because the biological systems used to generate them don't do fluorine.

(b) If you evolve a normal aptamer and then just fluorinate the hell out of it, its binding will almost certainly not be retained.

[beany], can I ask you a personal question? Do you, personally, have the faintest idea of what aptamers are or how they are generated? Also, are you aware that most aptamers tend to be nucleic acids, not proteins?

If I know the answers to the foregoing questions, I may be able to pitch my responses to be more helpful.

Oh, and [-] anyway.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2017



random, halfbakery