Reverse transcription of Pfizer's mRNA vaccine is happening in human cells | Hacker News Reader

Reverse transcription of Pfizer's mRNA vaccine is happening in human cells

mdpi-res.com

36 pointsopensores18 comments

An important line in this article: "The cell model that we used in this study is a carcinoma cell line, with active DNA replication which differs from non-dividing somatic cells. It has also been shown that Huh7 cells display significant different gene and protein expression including upregulated proteins involved in RNA metabolism." This is a huge caveat. The cells in the experiment are not similar to those in the human body, and the differences are very difficult to assess. While integration of RNA into the DNA is not impossible, it's something to be expected with a viral infection. So even if this indeed happens in human cells, the question is how large the risk is comparing to the risks of contracting covid.

Simple explanation: the researches found the RNA from vaccine integrates itself into the genome, hence DNA, and is being transcribed by the cell. This can alter protein structure, as in: make a mess and harm the cells. What they're describing is not unthinkable in viral infections but the research work here is not very good and the headline is amplified without much justification. Bottom line: don't panic, do vaccinate.

Resource: am a molecular biologist

If integration of RNA into the DNA integration is expected with viral infections, then shouldn't we expect that with vaccines as well? This isn't coming from a place of fear or rejecting the value of vaccines, I'm just curious.

Cells that are infected by viruses, thus reverse transcribing viral DNA, have the good sense to die. Do cells that get the mRNA from the vaccine die?

The cells in question are tumor cells.

If this is true then you could inject mRNA vaccine and tumor cells would take up the mRNA and the antigen the cells would display would be useful to lead T-cells to destroying the tumor cells.

The authors just discovered an antitumor activity of vaccines.

Although probably not.

And this study likely has no relevance to your biology.

Original headline: "in Human Liver Cell Line"

Submitted HN headline: "in human cells"

Abstract: "we investigated the effect of BNT162b2 on the human liver cell line Huh7"

huh7.com: "Huh-7 is an immortal cell line composed of epithelial-like, tumorigenic cells. The majority of Huh-7 cells show a chromosome number between 55 and 63 (mode 60) and are highly heterogeneous."

@dang: This headline does not match the source, and the change introduces a substantial lie.

To be clear, this is in a tumergenic immortalized cell line where you'd expect to find LINE1 upregulated compared to say, muscle tissue and dendritic immune cells. Their late paper qualification that most cells don't, but hey, some neurons do, doesn't really support this as a model of what happens in human bodies in most cells most of the time.

That said, it's not impossible, and certainly it could happen to viral infection created mRNA just as easily as synthetic mRNA. In fact, mammals wouldn't exist without the membrane fusion protein (to make the placenta) our long ago animal anscestors to mammals received from a retrovirus. The LINE1 elements are from a retrovirus itself.

Not sure how much to trust the author, but supposedly it means that it integrates itself into your DNA?

https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/worst-fears-realized-pfize...

This line may be crucial: "The cell model that we used in this study is a carcinoma cell line, with active DNA replication which differs from non-dividing somatic cells."

"Our study shows that BNT162b2 can be reverse transcribed to DNA in liver cell line Huh7, and this may give rise to the concern if BNT162b2-derived DNA may be integrated into the host genome and affect the integrity of genomic DNA, which may potentially mediate genotoxic side effects."

genotoxic (adjective) - Capable of damaging genetic material such as DNA, and thus causing mutations or possibly cancer.

A simple English translation of the summary would be very helpful.

exposure to the mRNA vaccine leads to a specific type of cell culture used for research translating that RNA sequence into DNA that then remains inside the cell. it is unknown if the DNA is included in the actual nuclear genome or replicated any further. this seems to affect the activity of some other genes.

specialized liver cell cultures, with some replication inhibitions disabled, were observed doing this. it is not clear that this would definitely happen in normal liver cells.

liver cells were studied because in living animals, vaccine exposure seems to generate a mild change in liver behavior for a short period of time. this may be unrelated.

long term effects are absolutely unknown, but the authors speculate about autoimmune problems. it's worth noting that an actual virus would engage in similar activity, except it would hijack the cell to replicate in the process.

this was done in vitro with carcinomal cells; not in vivo whole organism.

Vaccines Are Not Injected Into Your Liver!

vaccines dont travel from innoculation site to your liver, the products of the immune regime incurred will travel to the liver via lymphatic system and sent to the intestinal tract to be eliminated/defaecated.

any cell expressing the vaccine antigen protien on its surface will be treated as a pathogenic antigen and destroyed in the same way as muscles cells in the shoulder and contribute to the overall immune response.

Early on in biotech there was an effort to determine what conditions led to transfection and incorporation, of extragenomic nucleic acids, this occured at a low rate by manipulationg the extracellular tonicity and ionic species along with addition of NA roughly 1 successful transfection event per thousand cells was considered to be the expected average

The next step of course is to see if this can also be observed in other human cell cultures. Or if the fundamental mechanism is understood from this, one could make a good guess of whether or not (or to what extent) it does.

this can be observed in a wide range of cell cultures, human and beyond. that has been worked with for about 25 years.

the problem in the context of genetic engineering is to achieve predictable, directed transfection and incorporation, in an expressible and regulated form.

That just means its being read right?

Is there a surprise or unexpected outcome in that paper? Its hard for me to tell.

I am not a biologist but what I understand is that the mRNA of the vaccine is reversed transcripted and somehow incorporated in the genome of the host:

"Our study shows that BNT162b2 can be reverse transcribed to DNA in liver cell line Huh7, and this may give rise to the concern if BNT162b2-derived DNA may be integrated into the host genome"

Reverse transcriptase creates double-stranded DNA from an RNA template.

I think a caveat is that this study is done in-vitro in cells (carcinoma cell line) with a behavior very different from the cells in our body.

No, mRNA is meant to be temporary. Here the furthers the findings of another study showing that the corresponding DNA sequence was found in some cells:

> Furthermore, a recent study showed that SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be reverse-transcribed and integrated into the genome of human cells

> We detected high levels of BNT162b2 in Huh7 cells and changes in gene expression of long interspersed nuclear element-1 (LINE-1), which is an endogenous reverse transcriptas

> We also show that BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA in as fast as 6 h upon BNT162b2 exposure.

But don't freak out, the study begins by stating that it is temporary.

What is this about ? It is good or bad ? Can somebody translate the abstract of this article in human language ?

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