Joe over at The View from North Central Idaho asks how mRNA works. Let me give a quick and simplified explanation of how DNA and mRNA work with each other. Let me reach way back to my undergrad classes on cellular and molecular biology to explain this a bit.
Please excuse me if I make minor errors. It’s been a few years since I took these classes. This is also a greatly simplified Cliff’s notes version of several semesters of college biology classes. Even though simplified, the subject is complex and will make for a bit of a long post.
DNA and RNA are nucleic acids. They are long, chainlike molecules that can encode information that allows the manufacture of proteins and are required for all life as we know it. Think of them like incredibly dense storage drives that hold all of the information needed to build a living organism. Everything from how tall you are, to what foods you like, to what subject you enjoy studying in school is affected by what is encoded in your DNA. Every trait that is you is saved on this biological hard drive. With the exception of identical twins, no two people have the same DNA.
DNA is a template from which RNA can be made. The process where RNA is created is called transcription. The entire process is controlled by enzymes called RNA polymerases and occurs in the cell’s nucleus. Since the nucleus in eukaryotes is enclosed in a membrane, the DNA cannot leave that nucleus, so messenger RNA needs to be created in order for a cell to manufacture proteins.
The RNA molecule that is produced is a near mirror image of whatever part of the DNA molecule was used as a template. When a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule is made, that mRNA molecule then leaves the nucleus of the cell and enters the portion of the cell where proteins are made. The process of using RNA to make a protein is called translation.
One of the basic tenets of biology is that this is a one way process. DNA makes RNA, but RNA cannot change or make DNA. There has been one exception to this: a virus.
A virus is not a living organism. A virus (to simplify things) is essentially just an RNA molecule wrapped in an envelope made of other molecules. By itself, it cannot do anything, not even reproduce. The way that a virus replicates is that the virus uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to replace a part of the host cell’s DNA with a copy of itself. That corrupted DNA then causes the cell to create copies of the virus, which then go on to infect other cells.
If this change to DNA happens in a reproductive cell, the change in DNA can be passed on to that organism’s offspring. If it doesn’t happen in a reproductive cell, it isn’t passed on. It was that simple when I went to college.
That was how things were believed to work until about a year and a half ago. Then scientists made a new discovery. There are circumstances where DNA can be modified by RNA molecules.
When a new cell needs to be made so that an organism can grow in size, or a cell is needed to replace a damaged one, a copy of the original cell’s DNA must be made. There are 14 polymerases which control this process in mammals.
When DNA is copied, there is a built in error correction system that allows mistakes in the copying process to be corrected. The enzyme that controls this process is called polymerase theta. Polymerase theta can correct errors and damage that occurs to DNA inside of the cell.
It turns out that polymerase theta also has the ability to take pieces of RNA and use those pieces to rewrite parts of the DNA. The paper describing this was just published in June. This is huge- for the first time ever, we now know that human cells can rewrite DNA using RNA as a template.
So to answer Joe’s question:
It sounds like the DNA of a plant is being modified so that the plant cells themselves manufacture mRNA vaccines. Thus, a person eating the plant will ingest mRNA that will act as a vaccine. I don’t think the mRNA in the plant will rewrite the DNA of the person who consumes it.
5 Comments
joe · January 16, 2022 at 5:21 am
and I thought the left was all about organic… they took something in nature and fucked around with it to create the cluster fuck we spent the last 2 years dealing with… they aren’t as smart as they like to believe they are …I def don’t want to eat modified plants for a vax…
SiG · January 16, 2022 at 9:40 am
When I took my virology class (1977, I think) Reverse Transcriptase was still talked about as an important new discovery and was considered a strong indicator that viruses caused cancer. Your link credits the discovery to 1970, so here we are over 50 years later and they’re publishing that our cells already have the ability to turn RNA into DNA.
A good rule of thumb in electronics, mechanics, or most of day to day life is “don’t try to fix something if you don’t understand how it works.” There are exceptions, but it’s good solid advice. It looks to me as if they developed vaccines using mRNA under the idea that it couldn’t modify DNA without a reverse transcriptase virus being present and we now have found that’s not the only way to modify DNA. It makes me wonder if these mRNA vaccines/treatments are going to modify cells in bad ways.
It’s not unreasonable that when a new technology is being used in humans that it gets a longer trial period than these “warp speed” vaccines got. One of our takeaway lessons from my wife’s cancer is that it really takes five years to learn the five year survival rate.
Steve S · January 16, 2022 at 11:03 am
Helluva delivery system for bioweps.
Remind me again who’s buying up farmland?
Anonymous · January 17, 2022 at 1:07 am
SEX is an acronym for Software EXchange. Human SEX produces a mashup of human operating systems.
Yes, I think the government is technically capable of poisoning our mainstream food supply. You remember that episode of Star Trek when Spock got mirror-imaged in the transporter, and mirror Spock had to set up a chemistry synthesis to manufacture food molecules with the opposite chirality (handedness) so he could digest them? That’s gonna be all of us if you allow the bad people to create plants that produce mRNA “vaccines”.
Russell G. · January 17, 2022 at 7:15 am
Good summary.
A couple of things to note. mRNAs have variable half-lives in the “normal” system. So, even though there are a lot of ribosomes, or “protein factories”, you never know how much of a particular protein translation product will be made over time in the same animal–There are natural regulation systems. You don’t know what the half life of the mRNAs are until you actually study it. That’s a stone cold bitch. So, not a lot of work has been done on that. One example is “memory molecules” that are thought to be made shortly after learning (by mRNAs and second messengers) so that dendrites and/or axons make new connections/synapses…ribosomal protein synthesis inhibitors disrupt learning. But, those novel mRNAs are short-lived in the normal beastie.
Second, most of the ribosomal translational products are subject to “post translational modification”, meaning that the translational products will be cleaved into smaller peptides (think of beta endorphin cleaved down to LEU and MET enkephalins) or functional groups will be added such as phosphates or sugars (think glycoproteins). There’s not a lot of data on that, as well. So, my message here is that post translational events may play a more significant role in “normal operation” than just translation. It’s just not that simple because “second messengers” are still unknown territory.
My point is this. You don’t simulate (or stimulate) a natural “anything” by affixing or conjugating a synthetic mRNA to a substrate, injecting into a host to provide translation products, at presumably ribosomal sites (meaning it has to enter a cell), and then having it persist in that host without natural decomposition/degredation of the original mRNA by a “natural” regulatory system. They do that so that the translation product (intracellular) will be recognized as an antigen (S-protein) by the immune system (extracellular). But ladies and gentlemen, that’s not how the normal system works. And, that’s why it’s not working. And, that’s why the “gene” method hasn’t had much success at all.
So, regardless of how they attempt to get a mRNA into you, it’s not the thing to do.
(BTW: Ribonuclease is all over the place in the environment just to kill off and/or destroy mRNAs et al. that might be wandering by your cells).
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