[HN Gopher] How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
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How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus
Author : _Microft
Score : 354 points
Date : 2021-01-06 07:13 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (whyy.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (whyy.org)
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| It's amazing how quickly people leap to conclusions in the field
| of evolutionary biology. Fact: a portion of the placenta's
| protein sequence is very similar or identical to a virus.
| Unsubstantiated (and pretty wild) conclusion: the placenta is the
| product of that virus. We would never accept that kind of
| mythology in software, medicine, law, etc. - why do it here?
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| The parent link is a journalistic version of the information,
| not the scientific paper(s) with the evidence.
|
| Besides, the closest equivalent in software is:
|
| If you have ~20 lines of code, written twice with the same
| function (perhaps crossing multiple functions in the same
| order), written with identical style and syntax, with maybe
| some variable names being slightly different.
|
| In a copyright case, would you believe that these originate
| from different authors?
| darig wrote:
| You're right, God made the placenta.
| patcon wrote:
| Former biochemist here. There may be flaws in the study (i
| haven't read it), but none of what you're gesturing to strikes
| me as evidence of "jumping to conclusions". A couple thousand
| basepairs is a row (a fair assumed length for encoding
| proteins) is plenty enough to draw conclusions about
| evolutionary provenance, and this is totally common.
|
| For lots of ho-hum reasons that don't require any spectacular
| justification, you are full of virus DNA -- it's just mostly
| never mentioned in popsci articles that come under your
| skeptical lens :)
| sradman wrote:
| > conclusion: the placenta is the product of that virus. We
| would never accept that kind of mythology in software
|
| Seems like a very reasonable hypothesis if that virus is a
| retrovirus [1]:
|
| > Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are endogenous viral elements
| in the genome that closely resemble and can be derived from
| retroviruses.
|
| > ...not all ERVs may have originated as an insertion by a
| retrovirus but that some may have been the source for the
| genetic information in the retroviruses they resemble.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus
| flobosg wrote:
| > Unsubstantiated
|
| Not really:
| https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/088922299309810
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I'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 this article about
| tiger sharks secondarily losing theirs:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4906603/ I wonder if
| I'll ever run out of huge, obvious questions I haven't even begun
| to explore.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Sharks are viviparous, oviparous and also ovoviviparous.
|
| [..] There are over 500 species of shark living in waters
| around the world and the majority give birth to live young. The
| remainder are oviparous, meaning they lay eggs. [..]
|
| [..]Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the largest species of
| shark. Although these animals produce eggs, they don't lay
| them. Instead, the young hatch while still in the female's body
| and are born as miniature adults. This is known as
| ovoviviparity.[..] In some species, the female will produce
| unfertilised eggs, which are eaten by embryos. This is known as
| oophagy ('egg eating') and occurs in species including the
| shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and bigeye thresher sharks
| (Alopias superciliosus).
|
| Embryos of other sharks survive by feeding on their smaller
| siblings. This is called intrauterine cannibalism or sometimes
| as embryophagy ('embryo eating'). This is known to occur in
| sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus).
|
| Placental viviparity occurs in some species of shark - once the
| yolk sac has been depleted, it attaches to the uterine wall,
| acting as a pseudoplacenta.[..]
|
| https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/do-sharks-lay-eggs.html
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Thank you for this link on how sharks give birth. I never
| thought the subject would be so fascinating.
|
| Also led me to this interesting article on the Basking shark
| which has an absolutely gigantic mouth for filter feeding
| plankton.
|
| https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/basking-shark-cetorhinus-
| maxi...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I remember that! Also whales do that too iirc.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| 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.
| dmos62 wrote:
| 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.
| chongli wrote:
| It's entirely determined by the gametes. Males produce
| sperm, females produce eggs.
| jessriedel wrote:
| And the thing that distinguishes eggs from sperm is what?
| The relative size? (Are there no species where they are
| roughly the same?) Or that the mitochondria come from the
| egg?
|
| Edit: Looks like it's merely relative size, and when
| neither gamete is bigger biologists throw up their hands.
| Sort of a bummer that there isn't a more robust
| definition.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy
| chongli wrote:
| The relative size but also the structure and the process
| of fertilization. The sperm enters the egg, not the other
| way around. Mitochondria come from the egg, yes.
|
| Also note that sperm vary in shape. Mammalian sperm have
| the familiar tadpole shape with a flagellum for swimming.
| Other species, such as nematodes, have ameboid sperm
| which move along surfaces rather than swimming freely.
| jessriedel wrote:
| > The sperm enters the egg, not the other way around.
|
| I think this is wrong. My understanding is that the sperm
| cell membrane fuses with the egg cell membrane, forming a
| single container. The haploid nucleus of the sperm and
| the haploid nucleus of the egg then fuse. This processes
| is by no means fully symmetric (the egg has a tough
| coating on its cell membrane that must be dissolved by
| the sperm through the Acrosome reaction), but there is
| also no time when the sperm cell (delineated by its
| membrane) is _inside_ the egg cell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrosome_reaction
|
| My point was not that there aren't many correlated
| asymmetries between eggs and sperm _in particular parts
| of the phylogenetic tree_ (like mammals) that can be used
| for distinguishing them. My point was that there seems to
| be no fundamental asymmetry that applies to all two-sex
| sexually reproducing organisms; rather, there is a
| continuum of degree of gamete dimorphism that ends at
| organisms where there is no principled distinction
| between sperm and egg (isogamy).
| f6v wrote:
| I red this in some book I forgot the name of, so I can't
| cite anything. But it was explained that female strips
| everything except for the DNA from sperm. This way
| there's minimal risk of infecting the egg with the
| pathogens the sperm can carry. I'm not sure if it's true
| just for humans or other organisms as well.
| goalieca wrote:
| 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.
| chrisma0 wrote:
| Retroviruses and our coexistence with them is fascinating to me.
|
| Fun fact: "About 8 percent of human DNA comes from viruses
| inserted into our genomes in the distant past, in many cases into
| the genomes of our pre-human ancestors millions of years ago."
| https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/genes-%E2%80%98fossil%E2%80%99-...
|
| Endogenous retrovirus Wiki page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Just a wild thought: if aliens wanted to change a genome of
| some species, what are the chances they would construct viruses
| to do that? AFAIK CRISP uses something similar.
| irjustin wrote:
| Ah is that what's in the black goo?
| remram wrote:
| That would probably only work if it gave the altered species
| a significant advantage (or if you had a system to detect and
| penalize/eliminate individuals depending on their genome, at
| scale).
| koeng wrote:
| Or you gene drive them.
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| At this point in time, do you really think that viruses are
| incapable of sweeping the globe and infecting a significant
| fraction of humanity, if they don't provide a benefit to
| the host?
| remram wrote:
| The parent was more specific and asked about _changing a
| species 's genome_. Infecting everyone does not lead to a
| change in genome if they die (or fight it off).
|
| Assuming a low percent of the infected get their genome
| changed or produce offspring with altered genome, those
| don't take over.
| [deleted]
| studiecomput wrote:
| Another wild thought: Is it possible that the solution for
| harmful retroviruses, like HIV, are retroviruses itself? If
| retroviruses can overwrite or fuse with our DNA, can't we
| overwrite it back by making a retrovirus ourselves?
|
| I'm not familiar with this topic at all, but it's super
| interesting.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| The problem with pathological viruses is they take over the
| cells themselves and make them fabricate more viruses until
| they burst. In these cases there is no living cell left to
| reprogram.
|
| In the case of HIV it's even worse since it targers certain
| immune cells. It will eventually kill most of them if it's
| allowed to replicate unchecked, crippling its host's immune
| response.
| bolangi wrote:
| The baby's cells are not wholly walled off from the mother's
| system. Like the best parasites, babies suppress their mother's
| immune system when it comes to their own cells.
| greyface- wrote:
| The neuronal gene Arc, which is key to learning and long-term
| memory in mammals, also has retroviral origins.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5884693/
| johnnujler wrote:
| Every thing about life is so fascinating. I have always wondered
| how viruses have persisted for so long if they need a host to
| survive and it took us millions of years to go from single celled
| to multicellular. I wish there was a way to know everything and
| become good at everything. :/
| saagarjha wrote:
| That would certainly be nice in some ways, but then you'd
| deprive yourself of the joy of learning.
| olau wrote:
| I think the plain answer is that if they didn't, you wouldn't
| know about them. Just like all other parasites. In some sense,
| we're all parasites on plants, that in turn feed on the energy
| delivered by the giant fusion reactor in the middle of our
| solar system.
|
| In the case of viruses, remember that there are viruses for
| much simpler organisms, like bacteria. And yes, you can use
| those to treat bacterial infections.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> In the case of viruses, remember that there are viruses
| for much simpler organisms, like bacteria. And yes, you can
| use those to treat bacterial infections._
|
| Those are called bacteriophages (a misnomer, since they don't
| actually eat bacteria).
|
| I have a theory that bacteriophages originated as a
| biochemical weapon for inter-bacterial competition.
|
| If you think about it, the ability to produce packets that
| target and penetrate a competitor's cellular wall and inject
| a payload is pretty useful. Payloads could be as simple as a
| toxin to start.
|
| From that point, you could have stepwise improvements for
| deliverables that disrupt reproduction in the target (for
| example by cutting apart DNA strands), by inserting junk
| genetic material to evade self repair mechanisms, by
| inserting or removing specific genetic sequences to create
| other vulnerabilities, that insert the specific genes to make
| copies of the delivery system and various payloads (this is
| useful even if the 2nd gen copies are poor and don't include
| those same genes), and then finally a fully self-reproducing
| package that can spread exponentially.
|
| At that point the 'weapon system' can evolve independently,
| and indeed co-evolve with it's target/host to (probably)
| jointly outcompete other species including the originating
| species.
|
| Even prior to full self-reproduction, proto-viroids might act
| as a horizontal gene transfer mechanism that can exhibit
| familiar 'selfish gene' patterns and mediate various feedback
| loops between bacterial species. After 'escape' any species
| remaining with proto-viroids mechanisms would likely be
| parasitized and bootstrapped into actual viruses through
| competition and crossovers, or have those mechanisms
| suppressed into remnants indistinguishable from endoviruses
| (presuming endoviruses can even be identified in organisms as
| simple as bacteria).
|
| An arms-race of proto-viroid attack vectors might also be the
| antecedents of and/or the driving force behind the need for
| various organelles that distinguish the more complex
| eukaryotes from bacteria.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I wish there was a way to know everything and become good at
| everything._
|
| There must be some way to do it, because I constantly encounter
| people on the Internet, that know everything, and are good at
| everything.
|
| I can't get any of them to tell me how they do it, though...
| johnnujler wrote:
| I wouldn't say everything, but I have encountered such people
| too. Extremely knowledgeable and always curious. It feels as
| if these guys somehow have more energy to expend than most of
| us. On the contra, I get burnt-out pretty quickly when I try
| to push myself beyond an arbitrary threshold which I have
| never been able to measure.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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 complex life.
| mrunkel wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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
|
| What really happens is more like: [bunch of
| other spinoffs] ^ | A --> B --> ...
|
| And that some of those spinoff could be viruses. Imagine a
| mutation to A causes a bunch of functionality in the
| organism to shut down (and in subsequent generations
| disappear), while leaving a viable organism. For a
| sufficiently uncomplicated A, the result of such mutation
| could be a bundle of genes wrapped in a shell with an
| injection mechanism. That's a virus.
| bdjfkrk wrote:
| There are some hypotheses that viruses are involved in the
| origin of life.
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.0052.
| ..
| rocqua wrote:
| Wait, so placenta's existed before this virus gave us the ability
| for them to work?
|
| I would have guessed that the virus imparted the DNA at some
| earlier point, and that DNA helped a placenta evolve.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| More specifically, the gene that enables syncytiotrophoblasts
| to do what they do enabled placentas to be compatible with an
| adaptive immune system. So the evoution of the placenta needs
| to be seen in the immune system context, a more simple immune
| system may not have a problem with a non-self embryo in the
| body. So the virus gene could be one of the factors that
| enabled a proto-placent to evolve along an adaptive immune
| system. [Note this is pure speculation, I haven't read up on
| the evolutionary timescales of either.]
| _Microft wrote:
| There seem to be a lot of different levels of maternal support
| for unborn offspring, ranging from ,,shelter" by carrying eggs
| until they hatch to full life-support like mammals offer it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viviparity
| cat199 wrote:
| nah, it was totally aliens.
|
| source: i too can make things up and claim 'scientz'
| qiqing wrote:
| Relevant: egg laying mammals
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme?wprov=sfla1
| emmelaich wrote:
| also .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis
|
| Some sharks can have so-called 'virgin' births.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Sometimes there can be an immune response towards the baby. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemolytic_disease_of_the_newbo...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yes, quite commonly, really. Evolution tends to optimise for
| 'good enough' solutions, not perfect ones.
| godlovestrump wrote:
| This is very similar to the story of Jesus as his mother, Mary
| was a virgin.
|
| So they don't need to spend all that tax payer dollars on
| researching this.
|
| God made man. End of story.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| This is also described in a recent book called "world of
| viruses." Worth reading, as there is way more fascinating things
| I learned about viruses reading this book. Like that there are
| super big viruses the size of bacteria that are the closest point
| between a cell and a virus, a fascinating discussion about if
| viruses are dead or alive, and that there are 55 types of viruses
| found in a random blue birds that could hop in to humans like the
| West Nile virus did not so long ago.
| est31 wrote:
| If you want to know more, I recommend the virology lectures from
| Vincent Racianello: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0n8SeeC4II
| type0 wrote:
| This Week in Virology and their other podcasts are also greatly
| recommended! https://www.microbe.tv/
| xattt wrote:
| The article cited in the post:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177113/
| jonplackett wrote:
| So are we all going to be superhuman in 100,000 years thanks to
| COVID or does this only happen with retroviruses?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Was #DOScember the result of a Retrovirus?
| KuhlMensch wrote:
| I like to hope, if I am ever afflicted by a virus; the inevitable
| distress of "A virus? woe is me" will be tempered by the pithy
| thought, "A virus whence is me".
| buran77 wrote:
| Unfortunately trying to get something useful from a viral
| infection is almost like trying to get bitten by a radioactive
| spider in order to get superpowers. The problem is that as
| useful as those new "features" may be, they always need many
| generations and many more mutations to be integrated and turn
| into something practically useful. In the meantime you would at
| best have to live with a painful spider bite and some radiation
| poisoning.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
| xattt wrote:
| The best time to get retroviral gene integration is
| hundreds of millions of years ago.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Best time to get in trouble is when you're already out of
| it.
| simonh wrote:
| The second best time is now :)
| lundswe wrote:
| We have to hope for a real vaccine offer and behave
| responsibly.
|
| Not hoping to be in a distopic yet magic world.
| xkgt wrote:
| For 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.,
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30038815-i-mammal
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I think this article is a bit misleading. The placenta did not
| evolve from an ancient virus. A protein found in primate
| placentas (but, interestingly, not found in other placental
| mammals) is clearly related to endogenous retrovirus proteins. (I
| do not think that HERV and HIV have much to do with each other --
| they are very different viruses). But it is pretty interesting
| that primates started using this protein relatively late in
| mammalian evolution.
| _Microft wrote:
| As much as I would like to discuss but I am on my phone and
| typing there just sucks. The topic is a real rabbit hole in a
| positive sense.
|
| Either way, I would like to thank user dragosmocrii who lead me
| to this article via their comment at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25655272
| vagrantJin wrote:
| This makes me wish I paid more attention in my virology and
| Recombinant DNA classes. Reminds me of how strange biology
| actually is.
| kelchqvjpnfasjl wrote:
| Is this horizontal gene transfer?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer
| sradman wrote:
| Magnificent. The placenta uses a protein named syncytin [1] to
| attach to the cells of the uterus. This protein is expressed by a
| retrovirus that was integrated into animal DNA over 100 million
| years ago.
|
| This reminds me of Lynn Margulis' discovery that mitochondria and
| chloroplasts are ancient bacteria incorporated into the cell [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncytin-1
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis#Endosymbiosis_th...
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't recall where I read it but I recall that the nucleus of
| a cell started out as a captive bacterium.
| koeng wrote:
| Not likely for nucleus -
| https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.571831
|
| Gemmata obscuriglobus is pretty interesting, and one could
| imagine how you go from it to nucleus
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemmata_obscuriglobus
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting, thank you!
| jgilias wrote:
| It is also being researched how endogenous retroviruses are part
| of aging. The very rough idea being that at some point long in
| past a retrovirus became endogenous and provided a pathway for
| aging increasing the evolutionary rate of that organism, which
| would then out-compete most of the immortal organisms with time.
|
| Something like:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20346965/
| pps wrote:
| That's incredibly interesting! Do you know some (pop)science
| books that could help learn more about viruses? I found two
| that sound good from description: "Viruses: A Very Short
| Introduction" by Dorothy H. Crawford and "A Planet of Viruses"
| by Carl Zimmer. Would you recommend any of these or something
| else?
| erentz wrote:
| It's not a science book, but this did bring to mind an
| enjoyable sci-fi book by Greg Bear called Darwin's Radio, for
| reasons that'll be obvious:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio
| a11r wrote:
| Not a book, but prof. Vincent Racaniello offers free
| courses[1] and has great youtube videos.
|
| [1]https://www.virology.ws/course/
| f6v wrote:
| Red queen gives some perspective on evolutionary arms race
| between hosts and pathogen. Virus is a piece of genetic
| material, so to understand a virus one needs to understand
| how a gene evolves.
| jgilias wrote:
| I'm not really in a position to suggest a good book on
| viruses. I found out about this from a pop-sci book on latest
| research on aging and longevity.
|
| When it comes to viruses though, there's one more very
| fascinating hypothesis. That the cell nucleus itself was once
| actually a virus that took over some bacteria to do its
| bidding.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_eukaryogenesis
| blago wrote:
| I think immortal is the wrong word here. All organisms die. If
| it's not aging, then decease and predators will do it.
| remram wrote:
| I'm not aware of a context where immortal refers to organisms
| that can't be killed by accidents and predators. In mythology
| and novels alike, vampires, gods, elves, ..., are all called
| immortal and still can be killed.
| welfare wrote:
| It's called Biological Immortality[1] and there are a few
| examples of animals that are considered immortal.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality
| lsiunsuex wrote:
| I thought crocodiles or alligators (forget which one)
| were immortal and they tend to die only because they get
| so big and can't eat enough to maintain life eventually.
| But, they're not on this list?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Biological immortality is the technical term for organisms
| which do not die unless killed, or more accurately where rate
| of mortality from senescence does not increase with
| chronological age.
| ckosidows wrote:
| I thought the term was negligible senescence?
| jjk166 wrote:
| They're similar but distinct concepts. Negligible
| senescence means after a point aging doesn't negatively
| affect the organism. They don't lose reproductive
| capability or experience functional decline. Imagine
| being 20 forever.
|
| Biological immortality means after some point mortality
| rates don't increase with age - you can still grow old,
| it just won't directly kill you. Biologically immortal
| organisms don't have a max lifespan, if they're lucky
| they can just keep on going, but they may be dramatically
| more feeble than their younger counterparts.
| blago wrote:
| Ah, I didn't know that. Thanks.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Since I had to look it up...
|
| _endogenous_
|
| - having an internal cause or origin.
|
| - growing or originating from within an organism.
| flobosg wrote:
| To put it into context:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_viral_element
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The very rough idea being that at some point long in past a
| retrovirus became endogenous and provided a pathway for aging
| increasing the evolutionary rate of that organism, which would
| then out-compete most of the immortal organisms with time.
|
| No virus needed. Humans are currently (or were very recently)
| under enormous evolutionary pressure to get smarter. The
| ability to adapt is likely itself a trait as you suggest, but
| it makes sense that it can vary over time as needed depending
| on environmental factors.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Weird 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.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Some context: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/it-was-
| inevitable-that-anti...
|
| Please do not mistake this comment as antivaxx nonsense, the
| article linked discredits both the theory and the scientists
| who started it all.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Thank you! Have you found anything that would indicate any
| level of actual similarities between S protein and syncytine?
| Beyond both of them being of virus origin and starting with
| letter S?
|
| I couldn't find anything stronger than "german doctors say"
| which means nothing.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > I couldn't find anything stronger than "german doctors
| say" which means nothing.
|
| That's all there is to it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Yes. Sorry. I asked before I finished reading the article
| you linked to.
| f6v wrote:
| What's fascinating is that genome is highly dynamic. The
| transposons rearrange themselves all the time and are believed to
| be remnants of ancient viruses. And there's probably many more
| pieces of DNA which are domesticated viruses. Alu element comes
| to mind, which is the most common transposable element in human
| genome and probably has a role in regulating gene expression.
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