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If you told me that in 2021 there would be a global genetic engineering campaign I would have said you were crazy. But here we are. What an amazing time.
by 99_00 6y ago
If you told me that in 2021 there would be a global genetic engineering campaign I would have said you were crazy. But here we are. What an amazing time.
- earthboundkid 6y ago"Global genetic engineering campaign" suggests that the genes of humans are being edited, but it's just the genes of the vaccine.
- 99_00 6y agoThe vaccine deliveries genetic material into the cells, and the cells create protein using this genetic material. How isn't this genetic engineering?
- mahogany 6y agoUnless I'm misunderstanding, the host's DNA is not changed during this process. When I think of genetic engineering, I think of "changing the host's genome". What does genetic engineering mean to you?
- 99_00 6y agothe deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material.
- adrianmonk 6y agoBy this definition, the mRNA vaccines aren't genetic engineering. They don't manipulate the organism's genetic material. They borrow the machinery that the organism uses (downstream) when doing stuff with its genetic material. When I borrow your kitchen to cook my own recipe, I don't alter or even look at your cookbooks.
- 99_00 6y agoIsn't adding functional genetic material modifying?
- yellowapple 6y agoOnly in the same sense that navigating to https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com modifies your web browser's code. That is: no, not at all.
- 99_00 6y agoAn analogy about computer code isn't a valid counter point.
- yellowapple 6y agoI'm trying to put it in terms this audience might better understand, since said audience doesn't seem to understand it when presented plainly (as has been done already, by various others). Though in hindsight, there's a better analogy: So when you run a program on your computer, your computer doesn't directly execute that machine code right from the disk; rather, it loads a copy of it into memory first, and then executes that copy. If something changes that running copy (for example, by loading a DLL, or by using something like Cheat Engine to tweak the process memory), the original copy on the disk is untouched. Likewise, when cells make proteins from your genetic code, they don't do so by "executing" the DNA directly. Rather, they make a copy of (a.k.a. transcribe) the DNA - this copy being "messenger" RNA or mRNA - and then that RNA gets tweaked and spliced and such before eventually making it to a ribosome to be "executed" - i.e. matched up to amino acids to make proteins. An mRNA vaccine therefore works analogously to a DLL plugin: just like how loading a plugin doesn't change a program's binary as it exists on-disk, the vaccine's mRNA doesn't modify the DNA in your cells' nuclei - it instead goes directly to the ribosomes and gets matched up with amino acids to make proteins, leaving your DNA alone. mRNA, like a running program, is short-lived; eventually it'll finish running, and then that's that. Since no actual DNA was modified, that's the end of it: the proteins that mRNA coded are all that remain. If more proteins are needed - e.g. for another round of training your immune system to attack SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins - then you'll need a second shot of mRNA, which will again go right to the ribosomes, get matched up with amino acids to make proteins, then that's that.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoIt is genetic material but it doesn't get into your DNA and stay there. Those vaccines inject RNA into the cell. The RNA gets expressed into proteins, and then it breaks down. When people talk about genetic engineering, they are typically talking about permanently changing the genome of some host organism, and possibly that of its descendants.
- 99_00 6y ago>When people talk about genetic engineering, they are typically talking about permanently changing the genome of some host organism, and possibly that of its descendants. Maybe I don't understand what is and isn't genetic engineering them. Still it is exciting and amazing thing that is happening.
- dwaltrip 6y agoHuh. Based on your original comment, I thought you were fear-mongering / being conspiratorial. Perhaps the grayed out text biased me to think that. Whether or not the mRNA vaccine is considered "genetic engineering" (I think it's a confusing usage of the term, if not fully mistaken), I totally misread your intent. I stand corrected.
- 99_00 6y agoDo you know how long it takes for the RNA to break down? Is this why they need two shots? I find it very hard to find answers to these kind of questions using search engines.
- maxerickson 6y agoIt doesn't take very long for the mRNA to break down, a few hours. It's perhaps overly simplified, but the first shot teaches the immune system what to look for and the second shot causes it to prepare a bunch of antibodies that will attack the virus (in some sense, the second shot is a reminder to keep defending against the virus, and the immune system does that by making antibodies).
- jjcon 6y agoIs that very fundamentally different from like... eating food? ‘The administration of beef to the stomach delivers genetic materials which are used to create energy to power the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood.’
- 99_00 6y ago>Is that very fundamentally different from like... eating food? yes
- vmception 6y agoThe main distinction is that saying genetic engineering doesn't convey a shared concept. The point of language is to convey a shared concept and by saying genetic engineering nobody knows if you are a useful idiot for disinformation campaigns or just being unspecific in a way that nobody uses the term.
- 99_00 6y ago"Yes, some COVID vaccines use genetic engineering. Get over it." - Cornell Alliance for Science. https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some-covid-vaccines-use-genetic-engineering-get-over-it/ https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some...
- Redoubts 6y agoInteresting. Looks like they're talking about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which uses a reengineered virus as a delivery mechanism.
- 99_00 6y agoIt also says the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines put mRNA into the cell. But I don't think it say how it's done.
- vmception 6y agoI'm glad you found an article that matches an obscure academic use of the term, retroactively, as you started this thread with a question.
- Redoubts 6y agoGoing to be doing some genetic engineering later tonight then.
- yellowapple 6y agoGiggity.
- mcavoybn 6y agoAhh yes, arguing about semantics.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]