The Tree of Life

Just as a tree roots itself deep into the ground in order to extract water from mother nature, each one of us initially rooted ourselves deep in our mother’s womb to extract her blood and oxygen! This was all made possible by this organ of pregnancy: the placenta! The outer layer of the placenta (as seen in this video) is made up of cells called trophoblasts, which had to invade the uterine wall and then burrow into the mother’s arteries, enlarging them in order to provide blood flow for the fetus! Through this process, the placenta nourishes a fetus by using the mother as it’s soil! It acts like a lung in the exchange of oxygen and CO2; it works as a digestive system, absorbing all necessary nutrients for fetal development and growth; it functions as a kidney to remove wastes; it behaves as an immune barrier that protects the growing fetus from bacterial, viral & fungal attack; and it even produces some key hormones of pregnancy! Several pathogens can circumnavigate the placental barrier and enter the fetal compartment, often inducing devastating consequences (Zika virus, Toxoplasma gondii, syphilis, varicella-zoster, parvovirus B19, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus (CMV), and Herpesviruses).

Zika’s shocking birth defects have recently brought into focus the desperate need to learn how a healthy placenta does its many jobs, and to find treatments for when it is undermined. This is part of the reason why the National Institutes of Health has dedicated $41.5 million for an initiative to understand and monitor the development of the human placenta during pregnancy. The funding will support the development of new technologies to assess the health of the placenta as it grows and matures, with the ultimate goal of improving the health of mothers and children.