Carole Hooven, Ph.D.

And that comes next.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I want to make sure, maybe I can just talk about it a little bit now.

So that conversion is via the enzyme 5-alpha reductase.

that's present in high concentrations in the genital tissue.

So what's interesting about this is that you have a mechanism to achieve high concentrations of a more potent androgen without that having to circulate through the general circulation, which you do not want in a developing fetus.

You want to be able to control the development of the penis,

say, which is one of the things that DHT does.

So the genital tubercle can become the clitoris or the penis essentially in the presence of testosterone and functional 5-alpha reductase.

It becomes a penis.

The labia grow and then fuse to become the scrotum and also the prostate.

DHT is necessary for full prostate development and can later sustain the function of the prostate.

So it is interesting because it is this solution to providing very strong androgenic signals in the tissues that need it without wasting energy on strong androgenic signals in the rest of the body.

So I don't think it would matter as much.

I think that DHT is something like two to five times more potent.

It could be more.

But what this means is that it binds the receptor more tightly and it stays on for longer, which means that it produces more of whatever the protein is that it's upregulating because it's a steroid.