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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:14 pm Post subject: Was a 100 million year old virus the why of human pregnancy
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/doublex/201...
The above article claims that about 100 million years ago, a virus infected the DNA and made it possible for placental mammals to exist. As the scientist claim, the virus was able to worm its way into mammal DNA as a place it would be able to replicate itself rapidly and relatively safely.
I had a thought -- What if it wasn't 100 million years ago, but @65 million years ago, and brought to earth on a large astroid that wiped out many living species and made a safter develpmental environment for the virus' hosts to become better and better at safely replicating it?
And part of that process was that some of the species came out on top of the food chain, also guaranteeing safer and better replication
Twilight Zone stuff then, eh? Chariots of the Gods? Destiny? Man's fascination with the stars is because part of us wants to go back? WOO WOO WOO, WOO WOO WOO.........
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Seeing as all mulicellular animals
probably arise from bacteria combining, it wouldn't surprise me at all that the mechanism of our evolutionary development involved extra DNA from viruses - it's quite possible that all life on earth came from comet strikes.
One of the current lines of investigation into the causes of certain cancers is looking at human DNA, because they don't understand what half of it does - it appears that the theory is that we have switches which make certain bits of DNA active at certain times of development which are then switched off. If however, they become switched on again, perhaps by infection or malfunction, cancers may form. Given the times that DNA divides and recombines in an average life time, it's not surprising mistakes occur.
The need for increased gestation times is due to increased brain size/development, so most of us take longer to develop as embryo/foetus than your average amoeba. I do wonder about some people though...
Angharad
Angharad
Possibly, if this research
Possibly, if this research is correct, increased brain size/development is a result of lengthened pregnancy, not the cause. Lengthened pregnancy would allow brain size to increase. The question would be which is cause and which is effect.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
Hmm...
What if earth species have had several such viruses visit over the millennia? Move over ID (Intelligent Design), make way for ED (Extraterrestrial Design). Take your typical ID arguments, and replace "God gave nature a helping hand" with "An alien bacterium / virus gave nature a helping hand."
Yes, it's deliberately silly, but probably not much more silly than ID...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Doctor Who has already established
that the dinosaurs were wiped out as a result of an antimatter explosion (NOT an asteroid) from a crashing space freighter that spiralled backwards in time, when an attempt was made to prevent the Cybermen crashing it into Earth in the year 2526AD and destroy a conference that would have united the military forces of many planets into a war against them.
- - -
I'm an honorary catgirl. =) I like fine seafood, and I love huggles and gentle scratches! ^_^
According to "Q", all LIFE
According to "Q", all LIFE started in a small pool of water. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/All_Good_Things..._%28episod... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Good_Things..._%28TNG_episo...
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
"What if it wasn't 100
"What if it wasn't 100 million years ago, but @65 million years ago, and brought to earth on a large astroid..."
Well, for one thing, there's no chance the virus would be DNA, unless the virus originated from the earth. Life elsewhere would have converged to an unrelated chemical to perform the functions DNA performs here.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)