
War in the womb - Mz
http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/pregnancy-is-a-battleground-between-mother-father-and-baby/
======
rmrfrmrf
This article is needlessly sensational and has waaaaay too many misleading
"chicken and egg" statements. The evolution of the uterus came prior to the
evolution of the human embryo, so to say that the uterus "needs" to protect
the body against the embryo is untrue; in reality, it was the embryo that
needed to adapt itself to its environment.

It's these kind of articles that cause misunderstandings about how evolution
actually works. If we, the HN community, are interested in furthering our
knowledge bases, we need to stop falling for these pseudo-intelligent
reskinned BuzzFeed articles.

~~~
brass9
This is faulty reasoning. To think that the female reproductive system
developed prior to the fetus (in order to pave way for nurturing of the
embryo) is implying evolution is a purpose-driven, goal-oriented process - a
line of reasoning not too far from "intelligent design".

Not to mention the egg-chicken dichotomy is absurd. There was neither a "first
chicken" nor a "first egg".

Single celled protists first developed sexual reproduction about 2 billion
years ago as a means of producing genetically variable offsprings. It may be
assumed both the offspring and the reproductive machinery of the parents
developed concomitantly as life was making a shift from uni-cellularity toward
multi-cellularity.

As for mammals (which includes us humans), the placenta, which serves as an
important barrier between the mother and the fetus (only letting nutrition
pass through), is of viral origin. Placental syncytiotrophoblasts SCT-1, SCT-2
proteins are derived from endogenous retroviruses. Our genome is full of
fossils of viral DNA - accumulated over several millions of years. If these
viruses had not apt-get install-ed biological chroot jails, we would not have
been born at all.. (obviously some other modes of reproduction may have been
developed)

Carl Zimmer has some interesting write-ups on this topic:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/02/14/mammals-
ma...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/02/14/mammals-made-by-
viruses/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12paleo.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12paleo.html)

For those interested in evolution of sexual reproduction and "viro-biome", I
recommend Carl Zimmer's Planet of Viruses and Matt Ridley's Red Queen.

I agree the article is a bit sensationalist. Look at it in this way: had it
been a boring, academic, _science-journaly_ piece, many of us wouldn't have
waded through the article at all... Obviously the target audience for that
article (and the site) are general science-buffs and not only embryologists or
molecular biologists. Personally I think some dramatisation (to make the
content more appealing to general audience) is acceptable - so long as the
subject matter doesn't deviate too much from reality.

PS: apologies for my broken english :)

PPS: Re: the chicken & egg question - the egg came first because reptilians
laid eggs. Chickens, and birds in general, are descendants of dinosaurs.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
I said female reproductive system for a very specific reason; the uterus may
not have come before the embryo, but the cloaca certainly did.

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rosser
I shared this on Facebook, and my friend who's a perinatologist (a sub-
specialist who takes care of moms delivering preterm, moms w severe medical
conditions (lupus, kidney failure, heart failure) and fetuses with problems
(birth defects, fetuses who need transfusions for anemia) commented, saying,
"The fetus is the most successful parasite known to man. Many people even want
one!"

~~~
biomcgary
From an evolutionary perspective, this is probably one of the few types of
parasites that dramatically improve your fitness (kind of by definition).

~~~
3am
From a purely technical viewpoint, parasitism is always antagonistic/bad.

If not, it's called mutualism or commensalism. Not disagreeing with your real
point, just being pedantic.

edit: to biomcgary, two points: first - i was taught that parasitism is by
definition bad but actual interactions between species can fall along a
spectrum of mutualistic and parasitic (and individual and specific effects may
differ). second - it really ought to be moot since these terms refer
interspecific interaction, right? I did a little googling before this edit,
and yes, i see intraspecific brood parasitism and such... anyway, enough
digression from me. I just think it's an overly-clever corruption of the
actual concept of parasitism to describe a fetus as one. It's like calling a
hill a parasite because it takes effort to walk up one.

~~~
biomcgary
You may be trying to be pedantic, but, to be meta-pedantic, your point
highlights that two different conclusions are reasonable depending on the
scale of analysis. At a functional level, a fetus takes nutrients from mom
without returning any benefit (thus a parasite), but from the longer term
perspective of evolution the relationship is mutualistic.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
No benefit? What about a near-constant stream of endorphins and oxytocin?

~~~
sarink87
Yeah! Or the increased risk of death and sickness!

If tapeworms released endorphins, would it also not be a parasite?

parasite (noun): an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host)
and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.

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RV86
I read this article on Aeon the other day -- for an ostensibly scientific
approach, the author spends a lot of energy anthropomorphizing the biological
processes. Plenty of what's said is rigorous and fascinating, but I think that
style obscures some of it.

What's really interesting to me is that in many ways this "adversarial"
relationship must actually be looked at as a fairly optimal one as far as
evolution is concerned -- after all, our species (and plenty of other mammals)
have reproduced and thrived across the world.

I'd be very curious to read an analysis of postpartum depression through this
lens.

~~~
biomcgary
Interestingly, the genetic conflict described in the article approaches zero
in species with lifetime monogamy because maternal and paternal fitness
becomes the same. The genetic conflict increases by the degree of polygamy.
edit: I'm an evolutionary biologist, but not a theoretical one, so I might not
be aware of edge cases.

~~~
lambdaphage
Monogamy should decrease sibling-sibling genetic conflict, relative to
polygamy, since you can expect to be more closely related to your siblings on
average. Even in ideally monogamous species, though, there is still genetic
conflict between siblings, and between parents and children. Even though kin
selection can drive these relationships toward cooperation, there still exists
an opportunity for conflict whenever a behavior would benefit you more than
twice what it would cost your sibling. The tension is heightened for parent-
offspring relationships, since the expected reproductive potential of the
parent is even lower from the offspring's genes' point of view. In the cases
where this doesn't hold, such as in _Hymenoptera_ where females share 3/4 of
their variation with their sisters through a quirk of genetics, eusociality
tends to evolve and you get as conflict-free a family as you could imagine. A
hive. That's what the absence of parent-offspring conflict looks like.

Even during fetal development, in which both parties have a strong interest in
the survival of the other, there is a range of conditions that would be
acceptable (i.e. better than nothing) to both parties. You should still expect
replicating gene machines in such a scenario to claw over the surplus: the
mother seeking to distribute her resources among all her offspring in a way
that maximizes her fitness, and the fetus to maximize its own.

------
facepalm
There are even more interesting implications of the "war": women are
fertilized inside the body so that fathers can not be sure whose offspring a
child is (because the fertilization can not be seen, other than with eggs, for
example) - otherwise they might kill the offspring of other fathers (our
ancestors would have, that is). Furthermore, women try to hide their fertility
as much as possible, other than most other mammals. Iirc that is for the same
reason: since men can not be sure when the woman was fertile, they can not be
sure who made her pregnant. But if they don't know when a woman is pregnant,
why even have sex? And that is why sex is fun. We take it for granted, but
apparently it is only fun for very few species.

I recommend "Why sex is fun" by Jared Diamond for a fun read... I hope I have
remembered correctly (it's been too long since I read it).

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31reasons
>>Even with the help of modern medicine, pregnancy still kills about 800 women
every day worldwide

Um..I am not sure about modern medicine part. Most of these women must be in
developing countries where you hardly get "modern medicine" on a regular
basis.

~~~
biomcgary
According to the World Health Organization, 99% of maternal death is in
developing countries [0]. Given that this is likely the same source for the
800 women a day stat, the author is probably being willfully ignorant.

[0]
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/)

~~~
mqsiuser
To say 800 a day (worldwide) is willfully misleading

It's catchy and that's the intension of the author (she wants to be heard).
There are so many things to put this number into context.

800 a day, oh that's like 3 Jumbo's full of woman crashing each day. I mean
woman... how unfair is that...

But you know, each second ~3 people die _ohhhh noooo_, nobody should die
(ever)

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akirk
I think it is a very important detail to understand that new life has to grow
in water.

When life moved out of the water, different life-forms discovered a way to
take that environment away from the water to have their embryos grow: Birds
keep the water in eggs, mammals in their womb.

While egg-laying animals create self-contained environments, mammals need much
more energy to develop therefore have to be live-fed. So they feed this
separate, new creature. Of course they have to protect themselves from them.

~~~
infinite8s
If you go even further, our cellular milieu has similar chemical potential as
sea water, so we are in effect walking bags of sea water.

------
mqsiuser
We have huge brains, jo

They must be there for a reason

I tell you, bro. It's war, you know.

"We/I thought about everything and this is what we came up with (interwined
with very catchy words to hold your attention)"

Could you please do (representative) studies and not assume too much?! Very
hurting are some of the cause&conclusion sections... very slim terrain
(correlation=/=causation)

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gordaco
I guess that the situation is even harsher when there is more than one foetus.

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eternalban
"It's my body". No, it is a parasite and a distinct life form.

------
ryanmarsh
Can confirm. My new daughter tried to kill her mother by preeclampsia.

~~~
marktangotango
Sorry to hear that, that must have been terrifying. I hope mother and daughter
are doing fine now.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Thank you. Yes they are. The doctors were on the ball and pulled baby out as
late as they could. Baby is at home fine now and developing normally. She was
born at 32 weeks. Because of prenatal steroids her lungs were fully developed.

------
Terr_
I wonder if/how this relates to premature births.

~~~
biomcgary
Preeclampsia, a state of too high blood pressure in the mother, is discussed
in the article and is one of the leading reasons for medically induced
premature births. However, this in only one of several causes of premature
birth. A large number of premature births are spontaneous (starting with
either labor or membrane rupture) with no known cause and little forewarning.
Infection of the membranes also contributes to a large fraction of premature
births. If you are interested in this topic, my lab is looking to hire a
database specialist (postgres) in Nashville.

~~~
danielschonfeld
I'm interested in all things biology (tho I have no background in it). What
exactly do you need the database specialist to do? what are the problems you
are facing?

Contact me at downwindabeam at gmail dot com

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Kenji
In my opinion, this is the most interesting paragraph:

>In primates and mice, it’s a different story. Cells from the invading
placenta digest their way through the endometrial surface, puncturing the
mother’s arteries, swarming inside and remodelling them to suit the foetus.
Outside of pregnancy, these arteries are tiny, twisty things spiralling
through depths of the uterine wall. The invading placental cells paralyse the
vessels so they cannot contract, then pump them full of growth hormones,
widening them tenfold to capture more maternal blood. These foetal cells are
so invasive that colonies of them often persist in the mother for the rest of
her life, having migrated to her liver, brain and other organs. There’s
something they rarely tell you about motherhood: it turns women into genetic
chimeras.

The whole article sounds so creepy. I never thought you could describe one of
the most natural processes in that light.

~~~
biomcgary
Although the article dramatizes the conflict, the tug-of-war over resources is
real, which probably is why the placenta is one of the fastest evolving
mammalian organs in terms of morphology and genetics. The conflict probably
shapes the rate of preterm birth quite a bit. If you are interested in this
topic, my lab is looking to hire a database specialist (postgres) in
Nashville.

~~~
biomcgary
Sorry to flog a job opening so shamelessly, but I'm a research scientist at
Vanderbilt University working on the evolution of human pregnancy with an
emphasis on identifying the causes of preterm birth. We are building a
database to integrate a large number of experiments with various evolutionary
analyses (with a dollop of machine learning on top), which will soon be
available online at genestation.org.

We're looking to hire a full-time database admin/developer who finds biology
interesting, but there is no need for formal training in biology.

------
personZ
Related but incidental, but what's the deal with Aeon? They don't seem to have
a revenue model, but I read and enjoy virtually everything they produce. Is
there a gotcha coming?

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't know either; maybe they're funded by a foundation or somesuch. It's
under the umbrella of this magazine content firm:
[http://magculture.com/projects/](http://magculture.com/projects/)

While it tends a bit towards the softer and philosophical end of science, the
standard of writing is very high and I've found myself coming back again and
again for informative and thought-provoking articles. I would be amenable to
paying an annual subscription for it.

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guard-of-terra
This is where God either doesn't exist or doesn't care about us, so we should
stick to our devices AND FIX THEM.

Reading the article made me feel shame about not being able to clean up this
situation yet.

~~~
andreasvc
What are you talking about? Who's them? What fix are you thinking about?

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andrzejsz
This kind o article suits perfectly as a pro choice propaganda I could only
wonder if it was written with support for example Planned Parenthood

