How do mRNA Vaccines Work?
By: Adam Baginski
Tags: Covid, Vaccine, Science, Analog

To jump start this new series, we’ll take a quick look at topics which may involve some difficult science context, and may be leading to misunderstanding or miscommunication regarding their message. By applying a simple analogy that everyone can relate to, the true idea may be easily presented to all readers. To begin, lets relate the science behind the new mRNA vaccines to an everyday household printer.

mRNA Vaccines — Just Like Clicking Print

The first concept to get behind is that the Coronavirus comes equipped with a special spike protein, which as the name implies, acts almost like a claw or mountain-climbers pickaxe, and lets the virus hook onto the human cell that it wants to enter. By analyzing the virus in a lab setting, scientists have been able to identify and draw out precisely how this spike looks like, and even create the blueprints to make them.

Next, we have the idea of mRNA or messenger RNA. Much like a computer uses 1s and 0s to run every single program, or a musician reads sheet music to play a beautiful song, living cells use the system of RNA and DNA to create everything they need. RNA and DNA is made up of chains of particular chemical compounds, effectively reading a combination of As, Gs, Ts, Cs, or Us. So, the instructions to make a cell building block boils down to something like AAAAGGTCCTCTTCTA — gibberish, unless you are designed to read that code. The messenger RNA is effectively just a blueprint to make something.

Living cells, just like our bathrooms, need constant remodeling to keep their optimal function. Thus, they have to constantly print new materials from their mRNA blueprints to stay alive. The cell’s printshop are made up of ribosomes — essentially our protein building machinery. They take the mRNA instructions, and combine ingredients to make what the code instructs. Bottom line: if the ribosomes get hold of some mRNA, and they have materials to work with, they will make the product to the code.

Previous vaccines have relied on many different methods to activate the human immune system. Oftentimes, it was to simply put a weak form of the target into the body, and let the immune system attack it, learn about it, and become prepared for similar attackers. Since it was a weak form, the chance of it to take over the system was quite low, albeit possible. However, it relied on a healthy immune system to work out its own strategy for identifying the virus cell.

The new mRNA vaccines are designed to contain only the specific code that scientists reverse-engineered from the aforementioned spike protein. Just like when we hit Print, and code is sent from the computer to the printer, the injected vaccine is code sent directly to the body’s ribosome printers. This combination of As, Gs, Cs, and Us serves only as the blueprint, it does not have the ability to integrate into our body and change the DNA, or perform any other malicious function. Instead, the ribosomes receive this information and create the product: a harmless spike protein.

It cannot do harm, as there are no virus particles, but the immune system still identifies it as an unusual foreign body, leading to an attack response. In the same process as previous vaccinations, our bodies learn to identify this protein and arm themselves from future attacks — the process of immunization. The benefit, is that there is no risk of infection from a weak, injected form, and those with weaker immune systems can still benefit from the vaccine giving a jump-start to the defense process.

For more in this series, as well as for other trendy medical related topics, check out the rest of my blog.

Read more:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554980/