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Investigating The Use Of Aptamers In Binding To The Human Follicle Stimulating Hormone Receptor, Ayon Ibrahim

Honors Theses

Oral contraceptive pills use high doses of hormone to suppress the reproductive arm of the endocrine system in women. However, these drugs can have harmful long term side effects such as increased risk of stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer. Therefore, it has become an important public health goal to look for alternative ways of providing contraception. Aptamers, oligonucleotides that bind to specific molecules due to their unique 3-dimensional structure, are one alternative that has yet to be explored. The goal of our research is to develop an RNA aptamer that will bind selectively to the hFSHR. We first incubated …