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Comment by The_rationalist | Hacker News Reader

So what does being injected an mRNA vaccine means ? My DNA will be permanently altered and permanently create fake covid proteins ? will this add overhead to my biological processes, am I becoming less optimized ? Will my body consume more sugar ? will those generated proteins accelerate my ageing ? What could go wrong ? (I don't think anything will go wrong but what does the science says ?)

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> My DNA will be permanently altered and permanently create fake covid proteins ?

No, in fact, mechanisms in cells are in places so that "heteroduplexes" (meaning one filament of RNA and one of DNA paired together) are quickly degraded.

Secondly, the RNA doesn't even need to get to the nucleus, where the DNA is. All it needs is to land in the cytoplasm, where it will get processed by the protein synthesis machinery (ribosomes in primis) to produce the antigen. RNA in the cell isn't that stable as well, so it will be ultimately get degraded.

That is all true as long as the RNA doesn’t replicate itself and only produces antigens. However, I couldn’t find any papers at all that discussed if any of the current mRNA vaccine candidates self replicate their RNA to amplify the antigen production. I’d love some good references that address that.

This doesn't replicate, AFAICS. The one in Phase I by Imperial College is instead self-replicating.

Did some more searching today and this one does in fact amplify just like the Imperial College one

Did it? Can you point me to the relevant paper? It's been a while since I read their phase 1 data.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...

See the section on COVID-19 near the end.

> Pfizer Inc. (New York, NY) in partnership with BioNtech (Germany) has also developed a saRNA prototype vaccine, although the details of this vector/formulation have not been disclosed yet.

AFAICS, this is not BNT162b2, which is the one that we are talking about. There are 3 other candidates, one of them is the self-amplifying one.

Looks like you are right! Thanks for the good news!

So will this be in significant quantity in my body for years?

I don’t know. Busy straining my biology knowledge trying to figure that out.

The paper seems to imply maybe not? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187962572...

All of the above, according to my aunt Mary-Alice on Facebook.

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