241–250 of 389 posts
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lipofectamine is used for in vitro transfection, not in vivo gene delivery. The vaccines use lipid nanoparticles rather than liposomes
If they didn't use lipofectamine, what did they most likely use?
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rn...
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/22/mo...
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It's an interesting structure, but probably partly out of patent law. To wit, SARS-nCoV-2 is non-patentable, being of natural occurance. But a specific composition that encodes its spike protein, encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle? That's much more of a creative work.
> It's an interesting structure... I think that's the question. I'm very much used to reading "A machine-readable medium, comprising..." I'm curious what bits are unique to COVID-19, and what bits are generally protecting the idea of using a carrier to send a specific protein. In this case, is it the "S" protein phrasing that protects the specific embodiment of COVID19's spike?
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Which makes me wonder. Could you place the entire virus genome in these liposomes and get them to hijack the machinery to make an entire virus? Like plasmid but for viral structures?
Yes, that's one of the concerns many have about this technology. Literally, anything can be injected and done at this point. Not sure where the technology is exactly at, but I suspect we're no more than 5 years from major incident related to this. Even this vaccine, we really don't know the long-term impacts or risks involved with this. For instance, this vaccine does appear more risky than the standard flu vaccine:…
Also, you might not even be able to print full viruses with this platform. manufacturing mRNA is different from manufacturing all the random types of RNA in a virus, isn't it?
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Knowing nothing about biotech – if Moderna and Pfizer were working from the same sequencing data, why would their resulting vaccine mRNA sequences be different? Even slightly? Edit: I guess what I'm asking is: presumably these vaccines both target the spike protein. Do both of these sequences express the same protein? Or is there a "close enough!" thing in the immune system, where it can be a little different and sti…
This very cool article explains the mRNA sequence chunk-by-chunk which might give you a flavour of why differences exist: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
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This is a great animation of the life cycle of an HIV virus. It’s not exactly what happens with the pandemic virus but it gives you a good idea of the complexity of the process of viral reproduction (vaccine or immune response isn’t covered here): https://vimeo.com/260291607 Animation of transcription from mRNA: https://youtu.be/TfYf_rPWUdY
It blows my mind to see how life (and death) work at the molecular level--it's almost like some kind of manmade machine, but far more subtle and complex.
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> We aren’t that different from machines, we just need to know more about the CPU and all the co-processors and how the logic gates interact Except it is unfortunately not that simple, because it assumes that distinct components such as CPU, co-processors and even logic gates exist in that context, as is totally reasonable to assume on devices created by humans. Abstracting complex machines into distinct components i…
I am not able to draw the distinction you are trying to make. The more we make machines, especially ones to interact with inputs from our world, the more easy it is to understand our bodies. Correct, because there is no blueprint then we don't know about how the brains and neurons interact. But if there is a problem with a heart valve we know exactly where and why it failed. I expect greater convergence in these fiel…
I highly doubt that. Even for heart valves, which seem less complicated than plenty of other body parts (at first glance, I'm sure they are plenty complicated in detail), because they are comparatively mechanical. For example, Wikipedia says (with citation): "Causes of aortic insufficiency in the majority of cases are unknown, or idiopathic."
Try a kidney or something related to the nervous system next.
> The more we make machines, especially ones to interact with inputs from our world, the more easy it is to understand our bodies.
FWIW I am making machines, and the more I do, the more amazed I am about how intensely complicated our body in general and our nervous system specifically is.