Hello all my guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! Thanks for tuning into this strange post!
Now you might be asking, "Why talk about horse placentas?"
Two reasons:
Because we can!
Because research in this area has yielded significant developments in our understanding of horse and human immunology that could spark further studies with massive implications for the future of organ transplants.
Oh I'm so excited to get into this!!!
But I suppose I should do my job as a post-writer and explain what's going on. So before we get to discuss the what, we gotta look at the who.
This is Dr. Douglas F. Antczak, VMD, PhD.
Dr. Antczak is a Professor of Equine Medicine. He works at the Baker Institute for Animal Health in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, where he and his team carry out groundbreaking research in the Institute's Equine Genetics Center. He teaches, obviously. And of course, he helps care for the horses he studies and loves.
In 2009, he added another title to his portfolio: inductee to the University of Kentucky's Equine Research Hall of Fame.
Getting into that hall of fame was no small feat. Dr. Antczak has dedicated his life to horses, facilitated decades-long research projects and mentored new generations of scientists entering the field. His specific scientific contributions are numerous, with the most notable being his work in mapping the entire horse genome. (hint: mapping a genome is a BIG DEAL in science)
Then, of course, there's his research on the subject of this blog post: horse placentas.
Or, as he and his fellow doctors call this area of study, "Equine pregnancy immunology."
But here I am assuming y'all understand exactly what this entails. I mean, what exactly is a placenta? What kind of research is being done on it? How does it relate to the immune system? Why study it in horses, of all creatures?
I certainly didn't have the answers to these questions when I began looking into Dr. Antczak's achievements, and I won't include all the answers her; however, understanding the importance of this research through these primary sources will not only make you feel smarter, but give you a greater appreciation for exactly how wild and beautiful and everywhere science and scientific discoveries are.
So here we go.
Pt.1: What is a placenta?
"The placenta is the fetal organ that provides a protective barrier around the developing
embryo and forms the interface with the mother’s womb. Protection is necessary
because the fetus and its placenta carry genes that are foreign to the mother, and
thereby represent a potential target for harmful transplantation responses that could
result in immunological destruction of the fetus."
--Baker Institute for Animal Health
Hopefully that didn't get too muddled. For clarity's sake, let's look at some diagrams.
Here's the standard depiction of a placenta, first for a human, then for a horse:
As you can see, the placenta is a layer of tissue surrounding the fetus. It is usually shed during birth. That part's pretty simple.
Now, immunology. Our bodies have to protect themselves from external threats -- that's the job of our immune system. You may know that viruses propagate within our bodies by injecting their own DNA into our cells, or that damage to our genetic material may occur if a cell integrates a bit of DNA into the wrong place within a larger strand, thoroughly throwing off the original sequence. So its no surprise that our bodies have developed systems that hunt down foreign or botched genetic material -- anything that doesn't match the expected sequence -- and destroy it. Which is why a problem arises when one is growing a creature within one's body comprised partially of unique (a.k.a. foreign) DNA.
So why does the equine body not turn on the fetus growing within it? And how does the placenta factor into all this? Well, that's exactly what Dr. Antczak wanted to know more about.
Pt.2: Dr. Antczak's Work
As I am but a simple student, I will leave the majority of the explaining to Dr. Antczak. In the linked video, he describes the work he has done. The video is charming, insightful, and brief, so I hope you'll give it a watch!
If you want to view a complete list of Dr. Antczak's publications, you can follow this link. That way you can get your info directly from the source.
Dr. Antczak has, unsurprisingly, published multiple articles centered around equine pregnancy immunology. "Immunological memory and tolerance at the maternal-fetal interface: Implications for reproductive management of mares" is the oh-so catchy title of the one which inspired the title of this post.
I could ramble on and on about the methods and procedures of this study, but I feel that that would be significantly less entertaining than a blog ought to be, especially considering that I do not have the rights to reproduce images or use excerpts from the actual research paper. So I'll give you some links to the findings here, and leave you to explore the rest.
I hope you found this brief look at another odd little corner of science interesting. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!
Sources: