4 ms·
You might want to look up Dr.Michael Levin. He is studying exactly this. He found that when developing, cells move and grow in a particular direction. But when
by moi2388 2y ago
You might want to look up Dr.Michael Levin.
He is studying exactly this. He found that when developing, cells move and grow in a particular direction. But when an obstacle is placed in their way, they move around it to somehow still end up where they’re supposed to.
DNA is not all of the encoding. Even cells appear to have some form of navigation or space search capabilities.
- codesnik 2y agochemical gradients?
- fellowmartian 2y agoHis work is mind-blowing and completely upturned my perception of biology.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoWhy do miscarriages occur? They are frequent, so they seem to be an essential feature of pregnancy.
- cultofmetatron 2y agoI imagine from an evolutionary perspective, a false positive of the fetus bringing harm to the mother is preferable over the long term for increasing long term reproductive survival.
- candiddevmike 2y agoThe fetus's liveliness check failed
- im3w1l 2y agoMiscarriages must occur because our DNA is constantly mutating. Some of those mutations will be so harmful that the new organism cannot even survive until birth. In addition to those unavoidable ones, there can also be things going wrong by accident (e.g. the pregnant woman suffer physical injury which kills the fetus).
- pas 2y agolack of immune tolerance in the mother. for example (pre)eclampsia. we still don't know WTF is going on exactly (but it's basically abnormal blood vessel formation between the fetus and the uterus), and a few decades ago it was basically guaranteed loss of the fetus or the mother (or both), in about half a percent of pregnancies. nowadays thanks to medical science it's a hundred-times more manageable.