How mRNA Vaccines Work

from Charles, let's hear it. So we're gonna be talking today about the COVID vaccines, uh, specifically M in our I'm sorry, oh boy episode m r NA vaccines a k A Mr Nah. How I like to call him head and picked up on that before. Now I can't unsee it. Well that's because the M is little. Yeah yeah, but still now I see it very clearly, the mr NO vaccine. Uh. And just quickly, I wanted to say that Josh put this together from whole cloth, from about

eight sources, and you did a great job. This is a complicated thing that you did work your wonders on and you're really good at this. Is that what you wanted to say? Man, I wanted to say that, And also our hopes here are that you can understand this. I know we're kind of preaching to the choir a bit with our our listenership, not not fully, there's plenty

of people. There's a lot of varying opinions among the stuff you should know listeners, absolutely, but I think when it comes to vaccine hesitancy, I think most of our listeners are on board. And and our hope is that you can understand this a little bit before Thanksgiving with your weird uncle, so maybe you can say, hey, you know, I know how these things work, and it's not something

to be feared. It's something to be like to stand up from this turkey and a table and like applaud with full no reservation and full like, what in the world has science done? It's amazing? Yeah, it really is, because it is. It's unbelievable that science has figured this stuff out and they did it that quickly and that accurately. I know it is. It's a triumph of modern science for sure, um, one of the one of the biggest.

And we're gonna well, you know you it's an It's impossible to talk about the M R and A vaccines without talking about how it differs from traditional vaccines, and it is a huge step forward in vaccine research and vaccine production. Like, it's the future of vaccines. It's amazing

what what's just happened. But that's not to throw any shade whatsoever on traditional vaccines, which we still need, which we still use vaccines, yes, without which there would probably be a great many of us who would not be here because we hadn't survived, our parents hadn't survived, our grandparents hadn't survived some disease that a vaccine was developed to combat. So hats off to traditional vaccines. But m RNA vaccines are are pretty astounding and what what science

has managed to come up with. Yeah, So we hope to clear up some myths about what the COVID vaccines are and are not. And hopefully by the end of this you will agree that it's it's literally when I like, there's some serious Nobel prizes coming in the future towards these people, for sure. At the very least, we hope that you hear this episode and are able to go, huh so that's what's in me? Yeah, exactly, Well it's

not any anymore. We'll learn that too, that's true. Chuck Nice Nice foreshadowing, So it is really it's it's really hard to kind of overstate just how big of a breakthrough it was for for m RNA vaccines and that they do kind of read represent like this new path forward. But to kind of understand how the whole thing works and what makes it so magnificent as far as medical breakthroughs go, you kind and I have to first understand what m RNA actually is in what it does, don't

you agree? Yeah, I mean all this stuff is really new. I mean, the quickest version of the history is that, uh, this stuff was identified man a messenger RNA is what we're talking about, identified in the nineteen sixties, and then in nineteen eighty four the very first strand of m r NA. I'm gonna say m n r A so many times. You know that that m stuff and mr NAH, the first strand of mr NAH was artificially produced in a lab in nineteen eighty four, which in terms of

science is not that long ago. And since then they have made leaps and bounds to the point where they now can and did produce a COVID vaccine on a computer. Yeah, I mean, that's basically what they're doing. These days is is they're saying, Oh, I want I want a vaccine that produces this little viral protein. I know that nomic code of this little viral protein. It's something to taped and tap tap tap, tap, tap tap, and then press enter basically and the computer sets off some desktop machines

that produced that. That's that exact version of m RNA. That is really really simplified version of what's going on. But in a nutshell, it's basically where we've arrived now. And like you were saying, that's that's in the last thirty five years that we first very first time we ever synthesized m RNA. And as easy as it sounds now, Chuck, there were a lot of obstacles between and when the very first m RNA vaccines ever in the history of

humanity came out just in time for the COVID pandemic. Yeah, I mean there were a couple of big hurdles to actually turn that like original miracle into boys about to get so religious into fish to feed the masses. I would have gone with water into wine. Okay, Hey, that was a good one too. A couple of them being in we're gonna get more into this you know, as we go along. But uh, they learned how to that.

You know, m RNA is really fragile, so they learned how to protect it by putting it in these little tiny fat capsules called lipid nano particles. And so now they've got a little sort of a little vehicle to travel in that helps them get into a cell. Uh. And then and I know we've talked about cytokine storms before, when the when the human body has a really overblown reaction uh and overblown immune response to the point where

it can actually kill somebody. Yeah, and those cytokine storms just kept smacking down MR and A research over and over again, because even when they finally did manage to come up with a way to keep the fragile mr and A from falling apart in the body, the body would be like, what is this? Get this out of here. I'm I'm going to just overblow so hard against this this uh weird foreign invader that I'm gonna threaten to kill my human which is not at all what you want.

And they finally figured out that if you use some different nucleotides in place of other nucleotides, which are the building blocks of life. Um, when you're building this mr and A and then you really purify it, you get like no slop whatsoever. You have a chance of um making something that is that appears natural enough to full nature. That's right, And we're able to really clean that stuff up because it's not a live virus. Yes not, it's

not a living thing. And we'll get more into that, and that's another big way how it differs from other vaccines. But it's not a live virus, so you can you can just dump a bunch of bleach on it basically essentially, we'll say in a nutshell, but yes, it cuts down

on any type of contamination that you might get. Yeah, and we have to thank for all of this, really the Human Genome Project, because if not for that, which started in the nineteen on these thanks to the U. S. Government's um funding of that, we wouldn't have had any of these breakthroughs to begin with. As far as reading the genetic code, yes, it was a huge investment and it really is paid off in multiple ways, and just

one of them is m RNA vaccines. Um. The the whole thing that is just to me just amazing and astounding and just confirms that we are living in some sort of simulation that the breakthroughs that pushed this this research for m RNA vaccines from basically a pipe dream that we had no idea how we were ever going to to get there. Two. Okay, we're ready to actually create mRNA vaccines just in time for this pandemic that's

coming along. Um. They they all just kind of came together in part because people were already working on coronavirus vaccines. And what's really cool about mRNA vaccines is you can plug and play different stuff. Thanks to the Human Genome ject, we've learned to kind of read the genetic codes of stuff and to write it and produce it. And because of that, because we can do that on computers, now you can say, I've got a template for a coronavirus, let me get specific with it and make it as

stars COVID two coronavirus. Now that we've got the genetic code, we can deploy a vaccine against it. And that's how they were able to do it so quickly, that's right, And they estimate that as of July this year, that vaccine is saved almost two d and eighty thousand lives UH and prevented about one point five million hospitalizations when

hospitals are overrun, and that's a really important thing. Um, I'm gonna lobby for an early ad break here so we can just get cooking and go uninterrupted and unmolested until the second had break. That sound good? Yeah, a lobbying approved. Okay, we'll be right back everyone and tell you how all this stuff works right after this learning's stuff with Joshua John. Okay, so, um, we should talk about like I was saying, what mrn A does. Thank you for swooping in and reminding me that, oh yeah,

this article that you wrote. You got the history part first, let's start there. That makes it like he's skipping that. No, he's not skipping. I was. My vision is blurry. I'm so interested in this. Okay, So we're talking about m r n A and m RNA is short for messenger RNA and messenger RNA basically, UH is a. It's it's

a blueprint, right. It translates, it copies a little strip of the blueprint that's encoded in your entire genome, in your DNA, and it takes that little bit usually which codes for like a protein or peptide which are really important things. That are our body uses to do everything from um contracting your muscles to making you feel hungry. Like basically everything comes down to a protein or peptide, and the instructions for building each of those proteins and

peptides are encoded in our DNA. And it's messenger RNA that goes to the DNA says, Okay, we need some more of this protein. I'm here to make a copy. May I please make a copy? Here are some flowers. They said, if I brought you some flowers, you'd be cooler with this, And the DNA says proceed, And the m RNA goes and produces itself as a copy and leaves the nucleus. This is really important. M RNA goes to the DNA, makes a copy and then leads to nucleus and from that point on, the m RNA is

all about the cytoplasm. Right. Uh So, I kind of like the and I've expanded upon the wonderful metaphor you have of like a building site. Uh And I guess I think we failed to mention that um, the amino acids in the body is what's really carrying out the work, like making your eyes blue. Let's say, yeah, Well, the amino acids, they're the building blocks of proteins, of peptides. If you arrange a certain set of amino acids in a certain way, you've got a polypeptide and you've got

a protein. Right. So m n r A in this case, if we're talking about this is like a job site. Did I say n r A again? You said m r A, mem ra, Well, that's the n r A is just so like embedded in our that's just so sad. I haven't said an r A once. I know it sounds like it's so m r n A just like black angus. Yeah, that one got a good reaction to. That was good. So M and r chez m RNA in this case would be like the architect showing up with the blueprint wearing some like sensible like chinos, but

work boots. But they're really expensive work boots. You can tell them there's not a scuff on them, okay, And so it heads over to the work site, which is the cytoplasm of the cell outside the nucleus, right. And then I think in this case the ribosomes would be the contractor sort of because the contractor maybe translates these blueprints into I guess marching orders for the little workers

that are the amino acids. Yeah, the ribosome clears the sandwich off of like the drafting table and spreads out the mRNA blueprint is okay, let me see what we got here, wipes his mouth, some crumbs away from his mouth, and um gets to work taking that blueprint, taking that messenger RNA and trans eating it into those amino acids that get constructed in just a certain way to produce a protein. And the m R and A says, do it again, do it again, do it again. Let's keep going.

I'm feeling good. Let's keep this going for a little while. That's right, For a little while, and it just happens, you know, a certain number of times. It's not specific, it varies, but it's limited. And then that m RNA starts to break down. Nice going, you said, m R n A. I know, and I'm really concentrated. Uh. And then it's carried away from the cell and eventually out

of the body through the lymph nodes and it's disposed of. So, like all jobs, eventually the contractor will disappear on you, right, well, no, that was the architect out. Well, the architect disappears earlier. I guess sure, I guess so. But you always want the architect to come back sort of, Yes, well, the architect is gonna come back. You'll you'll get another architect.

There's always more MR and A. The body is always happy to produce more m R and A with sending out blueprints in and instructions and go make this protein right now, Man, I really screwed up. I thought the contractor disappeared. How perfect would that have been. It would have been pretty great, and you still got the joke in. It was just wrong. And that's just wrong Jo scientifically. But the thing about M R and A vaccines is that researchers have figured out how to use this natural

process to help us vaccinate ourselves against diseases. And they do that because we've reached a point where we can Rather than having the the M R and A produced in the nucleus of the celling going out into the cytoplasm, vaccine researchers produced the MR and A outside of the body and then injected into the body, and then it goes into the cytoplasm from outside of the cell, and then from that point on everything else follows the exact

same process. That is where we're at right now, and that is where you're you can start to feel your head opening up like a bloomin onion and out back. Yeah. And I mean that in and of itself is remarkable. It is that they said, you know what, this stuff can actually go into a cell, even though and we'll get a little bit more into this, even though it's like can be up to ten thousand times too big to permeate that cell, We'll figure that part out. And

they did. That's that's you know, courtesy of the of the little fatty lipids. That's the vehicle that allows that to happen. But just the notion that they thought, like, I wonder if we can get the stuff to go from the outside in, Yeah, was remarkable. It really is.

And it was just this contribution from hundreds of researchers just building on one another's work, and um, that finally led to the point where it's like it went from wow, this is a really cool idea, to Okay, we're actually preventing deaths in the pandemic things, to these things now right, uh, and you know there are a couple of ways to a few ways that you can immunize a person, like literal techniques using m r N A. And it turns out that we got I don't know if it's lucky

or just uh, you know, divine intervention smulation type stuff. It turns out that the one that we that works really well and that we're using for the COVID vaccine turned out to be sort of the cheapest and the easiest one, which means in vivo within the living So in other words, you just get injected into your arm, as opposed to like in vitro that's the other way, which is it takes a lot longer, it's really complicated, a lot more expensive. And they figured out, hey, we

can just do this with a shot in the arm. Uh, And then it's a conventional m RNA as opposed to something called self amplifying that we're not gonna sort of get into now. But it's a conventional in vivo shot that goes into your arm. Yeah, it's the most straightforward it could possibly be at this point in our m RNA vaccine technology, which like you said, is rather lucky. Yeah, it didn't have to be that way. It could have.

It could have been the most expensive and the most difficult in time consuming, and we'd be in a much different spot right now, Yes, for sure. So um to kind of explain how m RNA seems do their thing, it helps to kind of view it as like a metaphor for like a training session, like when you are vaccinated against something. Your your immune system is being trained

to fight an invader. But it's like a training session that uses like blank rounds, So it's much safer than than say, like you know, capturing one of those enemies, pushing them onto the field and giving everybody live ammunition. Things can get messy in that sense. It's it's like a military training session, I guess. So sure, yeah, all right,

I was thinking more SWAT team, but sure. So you know, we mentioned a couple of times those lipid nanoparticles that encase the m r N a uh, and that these things are anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand times too large for what normally could pass through the cell's membrane. But the lipid coding basically opens that gate and says, you know what, there with me, you love me. I'm a little slippery fat cell and just just coming along inside the cell with me and I'll shut the door

behind us. Yeah, which is really something because you know, if the if any of the what are called toll like receptors in the cell, which are always looking out for something out of the norm, notice, like m rna, what are you doing out here? You should be in there? What's going on? Everybody? Hey, come quick, You've got a big problem. And you would not be able to actually

successfully vaccinate somebody because you'd set off the alarm too early. Um, there's something called interfere on that uh, it actually does interfere with m rna from being transcribed. And so if it's perfect name, so if it caught m rna out, that interfere on would would come and and um prevent the m rna from ever being transcribed into the viral protein. That's a big one that that lipid coding helps protect.

So say, now we've got the m RNA showing up in the cytoplasm again coming from outside the cell, but now it's in the cytoplasm. Everything's cool, everything is normal, and things can kind of proceed from there. That's right. And it shows up with those blueprints rolled up under their arm. It's got the little work order from from the big boss, and it says, all right, ribosomes, you're about to get a lot of work thrown your way.

Are you gonna be okay with that? You've got to create all these different proteins that were coded for and in this case where we want to stop a pandemic, so it's coded uh for this virus. And we've got just a tiny little bit of this virus's body. And don't worry, you're not gonna get this person sick or anything because, uh, my friend Josh Clark taught me, you

made another metaphor of like a piano player. Traditionally, if you want to play the piano, you're gonna use at least an arm and probably one of your ears traditionally, Uh, but you really want both those arms in both those ears, yes, and and like and the in a body to go along with it. Like just an ear and an arm can't play the piano. So just a little bit of this virus isn't gonna make you sick, no, exactly, so or let you spread it to someone else. That's a

big one. And that's what and that's what the m R and A shows up coded for it's a little piece of the virus that you're you want to immunize the person against. And it says, hey, everybody, let's start making this. Huh Hey everyone, Hey, we're here. Come make

this viral protein, which is called the anti antigen. And so the body starts doing that because it has it didn't know the m RNA was outside of the cell or was ever created in a lab um and so it starts transcribing the m rna and the viral proteins start getting made. And the whole point to all of this, if you want like a really good immune response, Chuck, you want to trigger both of the two immune systems that humans have. You've got the innate system and you

have the adapted system. Adapted systems, yes, you've got to because you're a vertebrate. And um, if you can trigger them both to to a large degree but not so big a degree that you end up with a site to a keen storm that can accidentally kill you, you've got a good immunization going. That's right. Uh. And we talked about out with Great Wonder and Marvel about the human bodies immune system before, but as a refresher, we do have two of them. We have the innate which

is the first line of defense. This is like, uh, Sergeant Slaughter, you know, if foreign invaders come in and and Sergeant Slaughter just wants to kill, kill, kill, kill everything that comes in his in his little scope, and that's the innate system. Just neutralize everything the second it sees it. Be on the lookout for everything, and if it looks weird, kill it. And that's like if you get a skin on your knee or a cut on your arm or something and it's mild, that inflammation around

the cut is that innate system. And if it's mild enough and it doesn't get complicated or anything, that maybe all you need for something like that, Sergeant slaughters an that's all you need. But in this case, and with anything a little more sophisticated, you're gonna want to engage

that adaptive system as well. Yeah, which if the innate system is is activated on high enough alert, it's going to basically go tell the adaptive system like, hey, there's this is this is something more than just to cut on the knee, like we we really need to pay attention to this. And the adaptive system is made up of specialized white blood cells and they basically are trained to take a look at this weird new foreign invader,

which are called non self materials. Basically, anything that isn't part of you, that comes from outside of your body, it's called non self And so they look, I think so too, Um, I see maybe Phil Collins final album non self material. Yeah, but then it just be the cover album, which is good. It's it's a great name for standards, you know. Um. So they look at this non self material and they say, okay, we got to

remember this. So they basically learn it, learn to recognize it, catalog it, and then figure out how to produce antibodies that specifically attack this virus or this antigen um, the little bit of the virus that that can be infectious. And then it remembers it and of the next time that antigen or that virus comes into your body, your body is ready because the innate system triggered the adapted system, which memorized and cataloged antibodies to fight who used to

fight that virus? Yes, and it's it works great and it works fast. Uh. There was a study that found that the antibody producing cells can produce ten thousand antibodies per hour, no, no, no per minute, no, no, ten thousand anybody's per second. So like it literally just wants to flood that site with with reinforcements, basically to kill all this stuff in a very smart, strategic and pinpointed way. Yeah, so you've got your innate system your adaptive system. You

want to set them both off. And so we're going back into the cell. And by now, in this whole time that we've been talking, the cell that took up the m R and A that was injected into you in the vaccine um has been making that viral protein, the antigen, over and over again. It's like, I like this, I don't know what to do with it. I'm gonna just gonna start wearing it on the surface of my cell.

And the cell doesn't know any different. It thinks that, you know, everything's going hunky dory, but it looks good on me. Lucky exactly, but luckily. Um. We have some kinds of immune cells, as innate immune cells, who are on the lookout for anything weird. They're total fascists. They don't truck any kind of a nonconformity or anything out

of the norm. And they look at this this new same muscle cell, because that's what you get your your vaccine injected into wearing all these weird viral proteins and to say, come with me. And they overwhelmed that poor cell. They take them out back and basically disassemble them. I love that. I wonder it makes you wonder, like all these cells are just doing the same thing, but like some of them go, wait a minute, like you you are very suspicious and you're coming with me. I'm going

to introduce you to my friend, the adaptive system. Like do they know which cells or is it just a random thing? What do you mean they know what cells? You know? The cells that go that are more suspicious. But I guess what they're saying is like, stop expressing yourself, all right? Is that? Is that what you meant? Sort of? No, well, I've got I just find it interesting that some of them are just doing their thing and then some of them. I mean they're the same kinds of cells. No, no, no,

they're different kinds of cells, so they are different. The cells that are are suspicious, those are your innate immune cells. They're constantly on lookout for something weird, and when they find something weird, they just kill it. All right, and the other cells are just they're yeah, they're just sitting there like, not me. You don't look at me. I'm normal. I'm normal. I've got I've got no weird proteins on

my surface. Okay, that makes sense now, Okay. So then those cells that take the poor muscle cell that's been creating this viral protein and thinks it looks pretty snazzy and is now being disassembled, take some of those viral proteins to the adaptive immune system, and that's where they say, hey, guys, look at this. We don't know what this is, but we think it's a problem. So you might want to remember it and create some antibodies that you can deploy

against it if we ever see it again later. And at that point, after all of that happens, you are vaccinated against that. Yeah. And you know, here's the thing that some other myths that people think that, uh, this thing will live inside your body and who knows what's going to happen in ten years. In ten years, we'll all have horns growing out of our heads because of this. That's not what happens. M r A. M r NA

leaves you. It's very fragile, like we mentioned, and different studies have shown different results, but somewhere in the neighborhood of a few days to a couple of weeks is basically as long as that m r NA is going to survive before it degrades and then leave your body

through the limp system. Yeah, and under normal circumstances, it's just a few days, but they figured out how to make it a little stronger because you wanted in a little longer, because the more that your muscle cells are producing this viral protein, the more of an innate response, and then hence the more of an adaptive response you're going to get. But no matter what they do, the m r and A is going to go away. It's going to follow all the normal processes for exiting the body.

Those cells that produced that viral protein are going to be destroyed, and then those viral proteins are gonna be taken up and taken to the lymph nodes where they're shown to those um T and B cells that produce the antibodies against them. All of that is a totally normal process, and that is the point of vaccination because during this process, maybe you're innate immune response makes you feel like you get the flu for a few like hours or half of a day, or maybe your arm

hurts really bad. That's that innate response. But you're not going to get sick. You're not actually going to have COVID because it's that live training with blanks to to to to train your immune system how to recognize it, so that when stars COVID two virus comes along and says, I'll see what's going on here, he goes, Oh my god, Oh no, somehow this thing, this this body has already been trained to attack me. Now I'm dead and gone and I can't possibly infect this person. That is the point,

and that's what's been done with MR and A vaccines. Yeah, and I was about to describe this last part as another miracle in this, but I think we're degrading the hard work and research to describe it as a miracle. It is hard work in research is what led to this stuff. So I guess we'll call it a breakthrough. One of the other biggest breakthroughs is that they had to find the what you called the goldilocks zone, that that perfect, perfect amount so this thing would work perfectly.

So we talked about the cytokine storms. You don't want that. You don't want to overblow it and do too much, so you had to dial it back a little bit. But it can't be so weak that it doesn't even notice the antigen to begin with. It's got a notice, so it designs, says Annabi ease, so you have to find the goldilocks zone in there. And then there's this last bit of the fact that there's a basically an early warning system in the body that prevents m RNA

from being translated. If it thinks like it's not built well, if it's miss if it's misfolded or something, it can really wreck the body system. So it's on the lookout for that stuff, and it has to get past that early warning system in order to make all this work anyway, and they did it. They did all of those things. It's pretty amazing. They made something that's natural enough to

full nature for for for all intents and purposes. Your body is like, oh, I've made this mrn a cool, let's listen to let's let's start translating it, which is astounding, and then everything just kind of follows that process just perfectly, and it really is like, hats off to those people. Who made this stuff? You know, hats off, and I think let's take a break. I think we did a

pretty good job there. Yeah, so too, and we're gonna talk about how they make this stuff right after this learn it's stop with Joshua Jos al Right, I love how you put this so much in this uh in this article, I'm gonna read it verbatim. Okay, to put in a nutshell that's so oversimplified, it's basically wrong. Engineers spell out the genetic code they want the m RNA to carry, They add the ingredients, they press enter, and the computer tells the lab equipment what chemical reactions to

carry out and for how long. I mean, that's kind of it in a nutshell in the simplest like if this, if you really need to tell your weird uncle at Thanksgiving how it works, you may just want to start there, right and see what his reaction is he goes they press enter. That's my greatest fear, right, haven't you ever seen war games? Right? But to start nice, to start at the beginning, though, you have to understand what the

genetic code of this virus you're trying to fight. And again, thank you Human Genome Project for pushing that along um. And once you have the genetic code and you studied the virus, you can figure out what it's achilles heel is. And in the case of the covid vaccines, the to um one from Maderna, uh and then one from bio in Tech, and Visor can't forget to mention bio in Tech. Basically they're the ones who actually came up with the template for this vaccine, and Visor was like, hey, let's partner.

So it's it's wrong to just call it the Fiser vaccine. And by the way, just announced today that they approved mix and match. I heard that too, which is it's it's awesome. I mean, everybody loves variety. It's a spice of life. Well, I'm still gonna I got the Maderna to begin with. I'm gonna get the Maderna booster. I'm gonna I like variety, but I'm just gonna keep it, keep it in the family. Now, that's my plan too.

I like the Maderna as well. And by the way, this is so new and Maderna is such a new company. I think they were organized in two thou the covid vaccine that they make is the only product that they sell. That's how new all of this stuff is. It's crazy. But for the coronavirus vaccines, the covid vaccines, chuck um. They figured out that the spike protein s protein is what it's called. That that is the virus is Achilles heel. It's the thing that gives the coronavirus that spiky appearance,

that crown. Yeah, and that is the thing that it uses to fuse two a cell's membrane and then basically coax it to open up so that it can bill it's viral contents in there and make more and more viruses. So it's the weakest point of the virus and that's what they figured out how to target. But to understand that, you have to know what the genome is so that you can go in and say, here's the part of the genetic code of the stars cove two virus that

makes that spike protein. Let's take this plug it into a different um like a string of m rna, and then we'll have that m rna that produces that spike protein and we can use that in a vaccine. And that's what they've done. It's it almost seems like a Greek myth or something with the with the crown, because I remember when we talked about the coronavirus and that

fancy crown and like, look at my fancy crown. And it turns out is that that fancy crown is what's going to drag it down and vanity, vanity, that's what it is. We're playing a lot of human emotions. It's it flew too close to the sun, that's right. Uh So they identify I that little crown, like you said, is the Achilles heel, and they got that little bit of code and uh then the rest of this is and this is sort of another one of the big breakthroughs.

I'm not gonna call it a miracle, is that they again they figured out how to do this all outside of the human body because they got ahold of plasmid plasmid not plasma p L A S M I D plasmid d na um usually from ecoli. But don't let let that freak you out. It turns out it's really helpful in this case. And this acts as like a template.

It's just like the working the working DNA that they used to figure all this stuff out is standing in for the humans own DNA, and it's in the uh, it's in that it's on that work site, it's in that cytoplasm. It's like almost extra bonus DNA that's outside the nucleus, and so they're using that to stand in for our own DNA. So we could figure, you know,

we could figure out how to make this stuff work together. Yeah, it's almost like if you're looking at a piano keyboard and the piano keyboard was plasmid DNA, and say it coded for luminescence or something like that. If you went along and took out some of the keys and put in different keys, then now that it's coded for an entirely different kind of protein. In this case, that the antigen that you want, that spike protein. But the point

is it's like a structure. I keep using the piano metaphor in different of thrilling ways, and I'm pretty happy with that. But it's the backbone. It's the thing that you use to hold the original code. Because remember m R n A likes to go to DNA to make a copy of that little code, that string of of g's and teas and season as. That's how it's made, and that's how it happens in the body. That's how they do in the lab two. And to start that means you have to have d N A okay, right,

But here's the thing. You can't just create that template and then that's it. No bing bang boom bon joe.

You got transcribe that into the m RNA. And I think in the nineteen eighties at Bruckhaba National Lab is where they developed this really ingenious technique that use bacterial flages, which are these viral parasites that uh and this is where the E. Coli kind of comes back in that infect bacteria like E. Coal I. And they have a really really efficient RNA transcription engine, so they said, well, let's just use that because it's already really good at

that yeah, which is pretty cool. And here's the other thing too. If you're like, oh my god, equal I plasma, d NA, bacterial flages that are viral parasites they're using this together's it's like frankent signed stuff. Keep in mind they're not harvesting like wild ecoli or wild bacteria floges, like they're building those things from scratch in the lab,

and they're getting to the point. If they're not already there, whether like, oh, we only need this part of the plasma DNA, which again, by the way, does not create equal like it creates an extra bit of some thing, or we only need this part of the bacterial flage, and so they just make those parts that they need or increasingly just order them from from lab supply companies online.

Like that's the point that we're at now, because again, these are all non living things that you can sterilize, and they're in some cases not just parts of non living things like plasmid DNA or bacteria flage. Yeah, I mean, it's it's amazing. So they put this, uh, the plasma DNA template. They take the bacteria flage and they put it in a big soup kettle on the stove. They add a little chemical go juice that says, all right, get started, and then the bacteria flage says, wait a minute,

I know what I'm good at. I'm great at that transcription, and so I'm gonna just start transcribing right now, and I'm gonna transcribe that code in the plasma DNA and I'm gonna produce a ton of m RNA strands. And it doesn't it doesn't sound like a lot. But if you have a an average production run, you're gonna get about two grams of m RNA per leader. That's like seven to ten coffee beans averagise coffee beans. Yeah, and that's in a few days. And you might think, like

I thought, he said a lot. A couple of grams is in a lot. These vaccines use, I think respectively, Maderna and Fiser use a hundred and thirty micrograms per dose, so that two grams ends up producing anywhere from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand actual vaccine doses. Yeah. And also, don't forget we're talking about m rna, which exists on the nano scale, and you're producing ten coffee beans worth of that stuff in three days. They're talking small, yes,

very small. So they've got tons of m rna each time they run one of these batches. And then they take that m RNA that comes out and they purify it. They get rid of any leftover nuclic materials from that transcription process, clean up the slop, like I was saying, and then they surround it with a lipid nanopartic goal that packet of fats. It's gonna help it get into the cell and protect it on its wild journey through

the body. And then they mix it with a few other things, UM, usually a few kinds of um salts, often to um to mimic the pH of the body so that it's gets accepted a lot more easily. UM. They use sugar to stabilize the whole thing. And that's about it, and not even about it. That's it. Like there there's some fats, there's the m R and a salt and sugar, and then that's what you have in your vaccine, whether it's the bio in tech Fighter or the madernal one. That's right. And if weird uncle says, yeah,

but what else is really in there? Say, that's it the salt and the sugar and what I just told you about, dumb, dumb, And he'll say hopefully, well that makes me hungry. Now sounds delicious from in my mouth. It's like there's no butter in that, all right, Yeah, there's lipidano particles. So we're gonna finish up talking little

bit about what differentiates this from traditional vaccines. Uh. The biggest thing is that it's, like we've said before, it's built from scratching a lab outside the human body, and that's very different and it's non living, like we said, And other vaccines are called viral vector vaccines, and they either use like if you get a flu shot or something. You're talking about either dead virus or a live one that's been weakened, or proteins from a live virus. And

it takes a long time to produce these. Uh, it's not like like this thing went at light speed, but not in an unsafe way, in a in a truly astounding applaudable way. Yeah. No, I was reading about the Emergency Use Authorization project process and like the FDA did not mess around like they they They definitely did double time to to try to get these things out of the door because they needed to, but they did not

cut corners on safety from anything I saw. It was a really safe process and it but it was still really fast, not because the FDA cut corners, but because mRNA vaccines are able to be created really really fast, and so I think bio and tech fiser Um had emergency use approval within eleven months. Eleven months of developing the vaccine, the second fastest of vaccine had ever been developed before prior to m R and A vaccines is

four years. Yeah, I want to say a little bit something else about that, because I think that's a big reason for vaccine hesitancy, is the speed at which it was approved and like there's no way they knew what was going on. I read a lot about this over not even for this, just like over the past year. And how that process usually works is it's it's related

to funding. Like you're funded a certain amount of money as a company to get approval for studies and stuff like that, and you get funded that certain out and you can only work within that amount of money. So your study is and is only going to be of a certain sample size and they're pretty big. And then you also have to take a certain place in line.

With this vaccine, they had a sample size out of the gate that was humongous because the entire world wasn't getting infected with this stuff or not getting infected, but you know, tons and tons of people were getting affected.

The entire world was on watch and on guard, and so you had no problems with sample size, you had no problem with funding, and you had no problem with waiting in line, because they said, all right, you're immediately at the front of the line, so it didn't get approved because they just wanted to speed it through there

really quickly. It got approved because it jumped the line, it had tons of money behind it, and it had a ton of people in the getting you know, thankfully volunteering to get jabbed early on for the tests, which produced a ton of data that yeah, yeah, because they have more participant as usual. That was everything I saw as well too. It's so frustrating though, because they actually got more data than they usually get. They just got it a lot faster, and there's people still think that,

you know, there's just not enough information. It is because because it didn't take as long. Yeah, because it is very frustrating because people are like, I'm wary of that because it was so fast, and it was so fast because it was, uh, one of the biggest advances in the history of medicine that's happening before very eyes. But rather than just being like, oh my god, what an amazing time to be alive, what an amazing accomplishment humanity did, a significant portion of people are like, oh no, I

don't trust that they're trying to kill me. Your catalog me or Bill Gates wants to keep tabs on on me because Bill Gates cares what I'm doing. Yeah, we've met Bill Gates, you guys a couple of times. He doesn't care what you're doing. It's I hate to break

it to you, he does not care what you're doing. Uh. And you know we mentioned before that we uh it's almost like we were waiting of this, like we had uh the m RNA vaccine sort of technology figured out to a certain degree, and we were just waiting for the Chinese government and the researchers to release that genetic code. And once they did, they were like, all right, here it is. It's open source in January twenty and everyone's like, great, that's all we needed and we are ready to rock

and roll. And I think you did you say? It was twenty five days later that they produced their first successful batch, and then thirty nine days after that the first phase of human trials were underway, which I mean, that's just so fast. But to kind of go back to that point to chuck, because I think a lot of people are also suspicious about that, like, why were they just waiting for this pandemic? It's pretty suspicious that there were people who well at bio in Tech and

Maderna who already had like these templates ready. They were working on mRNA vaccines and for a number of different fields. And then there were other groups who were specifically working on coronavirus vaccines because we've dealt with coronavirus is before Mers Middle East Respiratory syndrome STARS, the original Stars, those are both coronaviruses. Both of them share their spike protein with Stars cove to the virus that that causes COVID

that's a coronavirus as well. They all have the spike protein, so they had spike protein templates. So, like you said, when Chinese researchers posted the genome of the Stars Cove two virus, people were like, cool, let's take that, plug it in and see what happens. And it worked. That's why it was so fast. That can't say plug in

play enough. Yeah, I mean that's literally the situation because in the future they might be able to solve things like HIV and raybes and maybe even certain kinds of cancer. Like it's it's a technology that can be applied to a bunch of things, and they were just ready to go for for this, Yeah, the cancer one. It's it's I mean, that's just amazing there. Yes, but they're getting to the point where they can say, Okay, you've got cancer. Come in, we're gonna take a sample of your tumor.

We're gonna study it, we're going to figure out what it's genome is. We're going to create a tailor made vaccine to train your body to fight that cancer, and we're going to vaccinate you against your own personal cancer. Were a few years away from being able to do that kind of thing. And then when that happens, if it, if it, if we can do it, we will have beaten cancer. That's what that's the next thing that m RNA vaccines are about to do. It's amazing. It's a

reason to applaud science. Uh I, now you have a little bit more that I didn't fully understand, and thankfully you're gonna tell people about it. Well. The other I mean, one of the other things, if I'm not mistaken that it seems like vaccine hesitant people are worried about, is that mRNA vaccines are going to embed themselves in your d n A and alter it. And that's actually the opposite of what mRNA vaccines do because, like we said, um, they come from outside of the cell and they do

their work in the cytoplasm. They don't go anywhere near your nucleus or interact with your d n A. They don't need to. They've already got what they would have needed from the DNA. And that the mrn A sense shows up with the blueprints ready to be translated into the proteins, right like, they can't. They can't get into the nucleus, right No, I mean, as far as anybody knows, they can't or they don't, there's no reason for them to. Uh,

there's no reason they should. And then even if they did, that doesn't mean that they would be transcribed into your DNA. Right The actual wild stars Covie two virus doesn't even do that. A lot of viruses actually go in take their RNA, reverse transcribe it into your DNA, and then get your DNA to produce more viruses. That's how a lot of viruses infect you. But the stars Covi two

virus is not like that. It's called a positive sense RNA virus where it shows up and in much the same way that the vaccine shows up with ready to go mr NA, the stars covie two virus shows up and says, here's some RNA, just start making more of myself. And it has nothing to do with the d n A in the nucleus. It just works in the cytoplasm as well. So there's no reason to think or believe.

And there's no evidence, um that the stars Kvie two virus imbeds itself in your d n A. And I hate to say this, but even if it did, at least eight percent of your d n A human being is made up of ancient viruses DNA that has been injected into humanity over the eons, and as much as forty eight percent of your DNA is actually old viral DNA. That's just junk DNA now, So UM, it doesn't do that. It doesn't insert itself into your d NA. Even if it does, basically you would be good at making ears

of coronavirus is for a while. Right. That's it. I love it. So there you go. That's m RNA vaccines. Nice work. Nice work to you too, man, Thank you for doing this one. This is a great one, of course. Uh. And if you want to know more about mr in A vaccines, then just start researching. There's plenty of stuff out there to explain this even further. And since I said just start researching, that means, of course it's time

for listener mail. Uh. This is a quick one. I'm gonna call this about the Church of the SubGenius is a follow up. Good morning, fellas. I've been listening to your podcast for several years. Some of my favorites include how Soap Works and how sloths Work. I'm listening to the Tale of the Church of the SubGenius episode as I type, and I often google the topic you're enlightening us with, and when I searched for Bob Dobbs. A recent Twitter post from Bob Dobbs said this Earthlings of Earth,

you will be punished for the nineteen seventies. That is all. Hashtag SubGenius, hashtag stark fists, hashtag Tuesday motivations. Uh. And Chris from Arlington, Texas has hysterical. I love your podcast. My wife and I have great conversations about your episodes all the time. Uh. And again that is Chris from Arlington, Texas. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Chris. That was a nice little pick me up, and we love the nineteen seventies, So screw you, sub genius. Agreed, Chuck, I'm glad somebody

said it. Well, if you want to give us a pick me up like Chris, Chris right, Chris, like Chris did, then you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.