“The cell is effectively dressing up as an infectious agent,” Kagan said. “The result is that it convinces itself that it’s infected, and then operates as such.”
Simmering Immunity
Immune responses can be destructive, and antiviral responses especially so. Because viruses are at their most dangerous when they’re already inside a cell, most immune strategies that target viral infections work in part by damaging and killing infected cells.
For that reason, cells cry “Virus!” at their own risk. In most tissues, Alu sequences are highly suppressed so that they never get a chance to mimic a viral attack. And yet that is the exact scenario the placenta seems to create on purpose. How does it balance the health of the growing embryo with a potentially risky immune response?
In experiments with mice, Totary-Jain’s team found that the placenta’s double-stranded RNAs and…
