By Dr Lester Simon
Some people are genuinely worried about the Covid-19 vaccine.
To understand and quench the worry, we have to ask and answer if some aspects of biology are intuitively at the root of the concerns.
Antigens are protein; parts of microbes that our body responds to by making antibodies. Our antibodies fight off the microbes by grabbing their antigens.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for Covid-19 comprise synthetic genetic material designed to allow our cells to make the Covid-19 antigen inside us. This is new and improved and distinct from before.
Beforetime, we were injected with the antigen itself. With mRNA vaccines, we are being injected with the mRNA part of the machinery to make the antigen, in concert with the other, native machinery of our own cells.
At the heart of the concern, fear and worry is that DNA and RNA are our molecules of life. DNA distinguishes each one of us from the other. The genetic information in DNA is transcribed into RNA. This messenger RNA leaves the central control-center or nucleus of the cell.
It takes the message outside the nucleus into the outer portions of the cell, called the cytoplasm. There, the genetic information in mRNA is translated into proteins.
It is not well known that only about 1.5 percent of our entire gene makeup is making protein. That’s about 20,000 protein-coding genes. Much less known is that although worms have less genes than us and less cells than us, worms have also about 20,000 protein-coding genes.
The difference between worms and us is that the non-coding, “Dark Matter” of our, human, genes is involved in architectural planning and regulation on a scale far, far superior to the dark matter of worms.
It is this ability in our architectural DNA to plan and regulate that I suspect many folks are worried and fearful about with the Covid-19 vaccine.
Suffice to say that the mRNA Covid vaccines are, biologically, a far unconnected distance from our DNA. They cannot and will not enter or mingle with our DNA, our life molecule, our keeper of the castle of our “holy and heavenly” genetic information.
The next time someone calls you a worm, don’t take it too badly. All creatures great and small have many things in common. That’s the basis and the marvel of biotechnology.
The science and ethics of molecular engineering demand our fearless attention, in order to gain public trust in messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccines.
