[SOUND] Let's continue thinking about galactopoiesis and galactagogues. And so one of the things that we want to think a little bit about is what kinds of evidence is there that hormones, and we're going to use prolactin as our example here, one of our best examples, the one that has the broadest range of experimentation behind it, are galactopoietic? Galactopoietic meaning that it's, basically, a galactagogue, it enhances or may helps to maintain lactation. So let's take a look at the kinds of things that we might think about. What kinds of evidence? What kinds of experimentation might people do? One way to think about this is, can we increase endogenous prolactin one way or the other and have enough impact on lactation? How might we do that? Well, certainly we can administer the purified protein. So we have purified protein for prolactin, administer that to the animal in various kinds of conditions, and say, does it enhance lactation? Use of a galactagogue, and here we're talking about, really, the drugs that we talked about in an earlier video, herbs, administering those, do we get enhanced lactation? Estrogen, if we would think back to when we're talking, in the Mother Neonate module, we were talking about that prepartum and peripartum surge of prolactin, a big surge of prolactin that really pushes the mammary gland from the non-lactating to a lactating state. And that process of lactogenesis, if we think back to what was regulating that, it was actually an increasing, in the late pregnancy, an increasing level of estrogen was contributing to that increased prolactin secretion. So estrogen can also Increase prolactin levels in the blood. And then milking frequency, if we recall that every time the animal is milked or suckled, there's a spike or a surge in prolactin. So milking frequency, so the more times that the animal's milked, the more time milk is removed. We get more prolactin being secreted during the course of the day. And that can also potentially increase endogenous prolactin in those animals. The flip side of that is, if we go to the next slide, the reverse side of that is what we're thinking about, if we decrease endogenous prolactin, what impact does that have on lactation? We can do that by a variety of methods, anti-prolactin, anti-prolactin serum. So we take purified prolactin, let's say, from a sheep. We immunize, typically, rabbits. We collect the serum, the antibodies against that sheep prolactin, from those animals. And then we administer that to, say, sheep or to rats, or whatever the case may be, some other animal. And then, basically, what happens is that the antibodies bind up the prolactin that's in the blood of the animal, and prevent that prolactin, those molecules of prolactin from binding to their receptor on the mammary tissue. So, essentially, we have removed endogenous prolactin from the blood, or at least brought that level down quite substantially. Another one would be actually using anti-prolactin receptors serum. That is, purifying the receptors for prolactin from an animal, and making antibodies against those, taking that antibody, putting it back into the animal. And it binds up the receptors, and prevents the prolactin from binding to the receptor. So, again, although we're not decreasing endogenous prolactin as such, we're decreasing its ability to bind to the receptors, because the receptors are all tied up with these antibodies. Ergot alkaloids, again, these are, typically, many of them have properties of being the dopamine agonists. And, in fact, I have that listed here. Other kinds of dopamine agonists, and there are a whole wide range of these kinds of things, again, that they mimic the effect of dopamine. Recall again that prolactin secretion is regulated by dopamine, and it inhibits prolactin secretion. So either ergot alkaloids, other kinds of alkaloids, or other kinds of dopamine agonists will, again, in those cases, decrease endogenous prolactin secretion. So we can kind of, overall, think of this in the context that if we were able to increase prolactin in the blood one way or the other by any means, will this enhance lactation function? And it depends upon the species. It depends upon the experimental conditions. On the other hand, decreasing by one means or another endogenous prolactin or its functionality in terms of decreasing the anti-prolactin receptor serum, typically, we're going to depress or inhibit the lactation function. So as we go through the next several videos, we want to kind of keep these kinds of things in mind. This is, how do we go about this? And what's the evidence that we have in interpreting that evidence of an impact of, in this case, prolactin on lactation?