If you want to know more, I recommend the virology lectures from Vincent Racianello: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0n8SeeC4II
This Week in Virology and their other podcasts are also greatly recommended! https://www.microbe.tv/
How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
31–40 of 111 posts
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#32nah, it was totally aliens.
source: i too can make things up and claim 'scientz'
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#33I'm just realizing that several shark and snake species also give birth to live young, but I don't know whether they have placentas or similar structures. I'm sure they couldn't be homologous to mammal placentas, right? (Certainly not if this article is right about the timeline.) To what extent do viviparous animals converge when it comes to the mother/child interface? So some sharks have placentas, as mentioned in t…
Seahorses are also interesting in this regard, not only do they also have internal pregnancy and a placenta-like structure, it's also the males that get pregnant.
Sorry for asking a simple question, but how do we distinguish sexes? If male seahorses can be pregnant, it's obviously not by which sex gives birth.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#34So are we all going to be superhuman in 100,000 years thanks to COVID or does this only happen with retroviruses?
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#35Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#36For anyone fascinated by this topic, the book I, Mammal[1] by Liam Drew is highly recommended. A whole chapter is dedicated to the importance of placenta in evolution of mammals, along with other chapters on other mammalian features like lactation, hair, locomotion, homeothermy etc.,
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seahorses are also interesting in this regard, not only do they also have internal pregnancy and a placenta-like structure, it's also the males that get pregnant.
Sorry for asking a simple question, but how do we distinguish sexes? If male seahorses can be pregnant, it's obviously not by which sex gives birth.
I am not a biologist but what I remember from biology is that female seahorses have the eggs. Sexual reproduction happens when two haploid cells combine and the sex is determined based on this system.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#38Weird how antivaxxers use this obscure bit of knowledge to get scared about similarity of covid S-protein to syncytin and immune response to covid vaccine (why not covid itself?) making pregnancy harder or impossible.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Viruses are ultimately bits of genetic code wrapped in a shell and injection mechanism. IANAB, so this is pure conjecture, but: it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that viruses are a kind of degenerative state - something evolution may just spit out as it makes mistakes trying to improve on cells. If that's the case, then viruses may exist simply because they are a waste product of natural selection of more comp…
This implies that evolution has a goal and that we are that goal. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution of natural selection that is common. Who is to say that viruses won't be the end result of life on the planet earth? Complex life more evolved life. It's just differently evolved.
I know that evolution doesn't have a goal. I may have antropomorphosized it too much, but my goal was to follow a sort of temporal/casual trail that we find interesting.
The way I imagine my idea is that, if you pick a species and its interesting descendants, and order on a timeline like such:
A --> B --> C --> D
[bunch of other spinoffs]
^
|
A --> B --> ...
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seahorses are also interesting in this regard, not only do they also have internal pregnancy and a placenta-like structure, it's also the males that get pregnant.
Sorry for asking a simple question, but how do we distinguish sexes? If male seahorses can be pregnant, it's obviously not by which sex gives birth.
It’s entirely determined by the gametes. Males produce sperm, females produce eggs.