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Thank you for the explanation. I was just trying to understand the news I heard on the radio this morning regarding the Covid vaccine. I was trying to see if

by tmaly 6y ago

Thank you for the explanation. I was just trying to understand the news I heard on the radio this morning regarding the Covid vaccine. I was trying to see if there was some analogy that could be made between software and biology to better understand how the process works, that is why I mentioned unit tests and technical debt.

Balgair 6y ago
Ahh, yes, ModeRNA's vaccine is some very clever stuff. The way that one works is a bit complex. Essentially, they still want your immune system to recognize that the virus is bad and then make antibodies against it. Usually, you inject broken up bits of a dead virus into a person. The immune system sees the foreign objects, and makes antibodies against it. Withe ModeRNA's vaccine, we go inside out. You have the body produce inactive parts of the virus itself. In this case, the 'spike' proteins of the viral capsid. They do this by injecting mRNA into you. Through some complex bio-chem, the mRNA that codes for the spike protein gets into your cells and makes the ribosome complexes produce the spike protein. These then get out of the cells, again via some complex bio-chem, and the immune system sees these spike proteins. The immune system then builds antibodies to the spike proteins, just like with a regular vaccine. Basically, you skip a few steps in the antibody creation process. I want to stress the mRNA injection part. This method skips the DNA, meaning that you are not editing the genetic code of the cell. The real magic here is the potential such a method has. With this method, you can have much better targeted cancer cures, much broader flu vaccines, and time limited protein production. Think time-limited genetic engineering, minus the actual gene editing. Want to glow green for a few days? No problem. Want to mitigate diseases caused by missing DNA? Just take this.
- tmaly 6y ago
  That is fascinating. How does the time limit part actually work?
  - Balgair 6y ago
    In that once mRNA is read it is destroyed by the cell's machinery. This takes time, but should be a exponentially decaying curve. Thus you'd need to keep injecting mRNA to maintain the effects. With the ModeRNA vaccine, due to the nuances of the immune system, antibodies will stick around. But with other therapies it may be very limited in time. Again, super big caveats to most of what I've been saying, as it's a large overview and there are exceptions to everything here.

by tmaly 6y ago

Balgair 6y ago

Ahh, yes, ModeRNA's vaccine is some very clever stuff. The way that one works is a bit complex. Essentially, they still want your immune system to recognize that the virus is bad and then make antibodies against it. Usually, you inject broken up bits of a dead virus into a person. The immune system sees the foreign objects, and makes antibodies against it. Withe ModeRNA's vaccine, we go inside out. You have the body produce inactive parts of the virus itself. In this case, the 'spike' proteins of the viral capsid. They do this by injecting mRNA into you. Through some complex bio-chem, the mRNA that codes for the spike protein gets into your cells and makes the ribosome complexes produce the spike protein. These then get out of the cells, again via some complex bio-chem, and the immune system sees these spike proteins. The immune system then builds antibodies to the spike proteins, just like with a regular vaccine. Basically, you skip a few steps in the antibody creation process. I want to stress the mRNA injection part. This method skips the DNA, meaning that you are not editing the genetic code of the cell. The real magic here is the potential such a method has. With this method, you can have much better targeted cancer cures, much broader flu vaccines, and time limited protein production. Think time-limited genetic engineering, minus the actual gene editing. Want to glow green for a few days? No problem. Want to mitigate diseases caused by missing DNA? Just take this.

tmaly 6y ago
That is fascinating. How does the time limit part actually work?
- Balgair 6y ago
  In that once mRNA is read it is destroyed by the cell's machinery. This takes time, but should be a exponentially decaying curve. Thus you'd need to keep injecting mRNA to maintain the effects. With the ModeRNA vaccine, due to the nuances of the immune system, antibodies will stick around. But with other therapies it may be very limited in time. Again, super big caveats to most of what I've been saying, as it's a large overview and there are exceptions to everything here.