Smoking and Your Baby: Understanding the Hidden Dangers

You might have heard that smoking can harm your unborn baby, but do you know how it does this exactly? This study took a closer look at how cigarette smoke messes with the placenta, the organ that connects moms and babies. It turns out, the smoke affects a crucial process inside placenta cells called the ISC pathway. This pathway is like a tiny factory that produces proteins needed for cell growth and function. When cigarette smoke gets into the placenta, it breaks this factory, leading to problems like cell death and slow growth. Scientists found that a key part of this factory, called MMS19, gets destroyed due to the smoke. When MMS19 goes missing, other important proteins are lost too, making it tough for cells to fix DNA damage and use oxygen properly. This leads to even more problems, like damaged mitochondria and too much oxidative stress, which can cause cell death. Researchers also discovered that a path called SMAD is involved in all this mess. When MMS19 is gone, SMAD can't do its job properly, making the mitochondrial damage even worse. Looking at real-life cases, they found that placentas from smoking moms show the same issues—lost ISC proteins and a messed-up SMAD pathway. So, what does this mean? Smoking harms the placenta in ways we didn't fully understand before. It's not just the smoke itself, but how it affects tiny processes inside cells. By understanding this, we might find new ways to protect babies from the dangers of smoking.

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