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Comment by Xeoncross | Hacker News Reader

So wait, the delete one of the eight genes that virus uses to replicate itself, inject that into the monkey, and then give the monkey the vaccine and watch the monkey's body kill the Ebola?

If the Ebola can't reproduce, how do we know that the vaccine had anything to do with the Ebola dying? It's not like it can live forever crippled and unable to reproduce.

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They manufactured the vaccine virus by developing 2 things: a strain of Ebola that lacked the gene to express a certain protein and a cell line that did express that protein. They infect cells from that line with their defective strain of Ebola, and since the cells are providing the protein, it is able to reproduce.

They isolate that vaccine virus from those cells, expose it to hydrogen peroxide, and then expose the monkeys to it. Lacking the protein, the virus is unable to reproduce.

After that exposure, when the monkeys have had time to develop immunity, they are exposed to active Ebola virus. So the earlier exposure to the vaccine virus provides them with immunity against the active virus.

Thank you, that explains the steps much better.

Generally they follow exposure to the vaccine with exposure to the actual virus and see if the monkeys become infected.

> It's not like it can live forever crippled and unable to reproduce.

(Disclaimer: I am a layman when it comes to biology.)

Why not? Viruses don't have a metabolism or anything, shouldn't they live forever unless destroyed?

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