How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus

Re:How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus by matheusmoreira on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:36PM (#25679193)

Yes. Ribosomes are dumb machines. They have no authentication mechanism. The RNA randomly gets near the ribosome, interacts with it and the result is a whole new protein. It doesn't know whether the RNA was translated from cellular or viral DNA. In the case of cellular DNA, the ribosome makes useful proteins that helps the cell perform its function. In the case of viral DNA, the ribosome makes viral proteins which eventually get assembled into a new copy of the virus.

Viruses aren't actual living beings, they're just self-replicating structures. They are capable of injecting genetic material into other cells in order to get them to make more copies of themselves.

> Pathological viral infection feels like an infinite loop.

The same logic could be applied to biochemistry in general. It's not 100% accurate but it is a lot of fun to think about it in those terms. It's also fun to think about programming in biochemical terms! I wrote about this in the past:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21562716

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Re:How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus by studiecomput on Friday January 08, 2021 @04:10AM (#25682949)

This is an awesome topic. Thank you both for your response! I try to convert everything into programming terms to make it a bit easier to understand, but it's a really complex topic imo.

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