3 ms·

The point is that the character of RNA is intrinsically different than other classes of chemicals. More formally, the Bayesian prior of an RNA being dangerous/

The point is that the character of RNA is intrinsically different than other classes of chemicals. More formally, the Bayesian prior of an RNA being dangerous/ toxic is far lower, ergo less caution is warranted. (Opportunity cost, wasted effort, etc.) More concretely as relates to the prior, but can't a person fairly literally eat a spoonful of isolated influenza[0] without getting sick? [0] or other virus, RNA, DNA, etc.

zmgsabst 3y ago
Can you name a source of RNA being injected into an organism that isn’t harmful? I can only think of diseases; which would mean my priors suggest such things should be avoided.
- asdff 3y ago
  You can quite literally inject this RNA product into your arm and nothing would happen. The sequence needs to be specific to a human mRNA in order for silencing to occur. On top of that you have to deliver the RNA into the cell itself intact. The fact this works is this beetle happens to be responsive to environmental RNA, meaning they could simply take a piece of potato and dip it in beetle specific double stranded RNA, and the larvae would eat it as the delivery mechanism. There is probably some fitness advantage to being able to engage in such uptake normally, and this is what is being taken advantage of here for insecticide purposes.
- jryb 3y ago
  The other response is pretty good. I would add that you won't be injecting this food into your bloodstream unless that's how you take all of your meals. Your body also produces enzymes that degrade RNA in the duodenum. And this particular RNA has no homology to the human genome, so it doesn't even matter if it could make it through your digestive system intact. And even then, it would have no way of entering the cells that it encountered, so it wouldn't even have a chance to interact with the gene silencing proteins. The reason why viruses work is because they have ways of protecting their genomes and also sneaking into cells, this product has nothing at all to do that. Which again, still doesn't matter since it would be harmless even inside your cells.

zmgsabst 3y ago

Can you name a source of RNA being injected into an organism that isn’t harmful? I can only think of diseases; which would mean my priors suggest such things should be avoided.

asdff 3y ago
You can quite literally inject this RNA product into your arm and nothing would happen. The sequence needs to be specific to a human mRNA in order for silencing to occur. On top of that you have to deliver the RNA into the cell itself intact. The fact this works is this beetle happens to be responsive to environmental RNA, meaning they could simply take a piece of potato and dip it in beetle specific double stranded RNA, and the larvae would eat it as the delivery mechanism. There is probably some fitness advantage to being able to engage in such uptake normally, and this is what is being taken advantage of here for insecticide purposes.
jryb 3y ago
The other response is pretty good. I would add that you won't be injecting this food into your bloodstream unless that's how you take all of your meals. Your body also produces enzymes that degrade RNA in the duodenum. And this particular RNA has no homology to the human genome, so it doesn't even matter if it could make it through your digestive system intact. And even then, it would have no way of entering the cells that it encountered, so it wouldn't even have a chance to interact with the gene silencing proteins. The reason why viruses work is because they have ways of protecting their genomes and also sneaking into cells, this product has nothing at all to do that. Which again, still doesn't matter since it would be harmless even inside your cells.