How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
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Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#2Related:
How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25655346 - Jan 2021 (106 comments)
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#3It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#4It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
I suppose the ethical question would be: how many current humans are you willing to let die from exposure to a virus in the hopes that one of them might mutate something useful?
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#5One way that viral elements are expressed are as transposons.
There is even an infectious variant, a gypsy transposon, that can move to neighboring cells.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#6It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
I suppose the ethical question would be: how many current humans are you willing to let die from exposure to a virus in the hopes that one of them might mutate something useful?
It's really an impossible calculation. There's no way to appraise the consequences to assign a value. If it were possible to say, that a future mutation was necessary to save humanity (ie. we are doomed without entering that future) well then perhaps we'd be willing to sacrifice a lot of us now.
It's all academic of course, we'll never make such a decision, and never know what could have been. It's just another reminder that we don't really know the future or the best course of action in these situations -- we're just taking our best guess (even the experts).
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#7It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
There are probably thousands (and my guess would be much more) viruses that that dance on the information playground that is our genome, metagenome, and the genomes of the organisms we host. Fighting a few of them is probably not going to be a significant issue.
Having more individuals around by itself would also lead to mutations which the environment may select for in the future. By itself there is no such thing as a beneficial mutation (gene import) unless the environment proves it to be.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#8It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
Yeah, if I remember correctly the RAG recombinases that enable crazy diversity in your B and T cell receptors of your adaptive immune system are also thought to come from a retrovirus that got into our ancestors germ cells.
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
#9It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some way we can't foresee.
It is required some process of natural selection for mutations to be selected against, do we know how this occurs with the modern homo sapiens?
Re: How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
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