Magic embryology: placenta invades Mother (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 04, 2018, 15:18 (1967 days ago) @ David Turell

The entire process is magical. the Mother's uterus is attacked but not harmed and as mentioned before the placenta has effects on the growing fetus:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/health/placenta-pregnancy-health.html?emc=edit_th_18...

"The placenta may be dismissed as “afterbirth,” deemed an afterthought in discussions about pregnancy and even relegated, literally, to the trash bin. But at long last it is beginning to get its due.

"In the past three weeks, scientists have published three significant studies of this ephemeral organ. One gave a detailed analysis of all the genes expressed, or converted into functioning proteins, in the placenta; another experimented with a way to silence that expression when it causes trouble. In the third, researchers created mini-placentas, three-dimensional clusters of cells, or organoids, that mimic the real thing in the lab, and can be used as models for studying it.

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“'The missing link between complications during pregnancy and development of the fetal brain has been hiding in plain sight for a long time,” said Dr. Daniel R. Weinberger, director of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in Baltimore, Md. “It’s the placenta.”

"During the course of human pregnancy, the placenta grows from a few cells into an organ weighing more than a pound. It often is compared to an aggressive cancer. But a more apt metaphor might be a military invasion, as 90 percent of the placenta is made up of cells not from the mother but from the fetus.

"Early in gestation, the fertilized egg implants itself in the mother’s uterine lining and sends out a few cells to breach it. These foot soldiers produce proteins that disarm the mother’s defenses, destroy the smooth muscles that line her blood vessels and dilate and redirect the vessels to feed the embryo. As the placental beachhead grows, its cells specialize to do the work of heart, lungs, liver and kidneys until the fetus can fend for itself. Groups of cells exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide; provide nutrients and hormones; protect the fetus from harmful stress, germs and chemicals; and remove waste.

"This incursion fails as often as 20 percent of the time, and when it does, it can cause severe complications for the fetus, at birth and afterward. It may also forecast trouble for the mother’s health later in life: pre-eclampsia can portend heart disease and stroke, and gestational diabetes can signal later obesity and metabolic disease."

Comment: This has to be designed. A foreign system, 90% fetal, invades the Mother like a cancer, and yet they cooperate. This is an arrangement that cannot ever be stepwise, but must be carefully designed. God at work.