I’ve read recently about fears of immunizations affecting DNA. I understand that this is not the case and that the injection is “Genetic Material” to give instructions to your body to replicate certain things.
What I don’t understand is: Your genetics affect your future children; so by introducing genetic material aren’t you changing the DNA of future humans?
If in fact this is the case isn’t it possible that you won’t see side effects of these injected materials until the next generation is born?
In: Biology
As far as I know vaccines contain RNA, not DNA.
RNA is the stuff that your DNA “makes” to do stuff. You pass DNA down to your kids, but not RNA, because theoretically you have the same RNA (except you’re vaccinated so you actually don’t, which is why they need to get vaccinated too).
DNA lives in the nucleus of your cell. It makes mRNA, which is basically copies of the DNA (it has some structural differences), but in little snippets. The mRNA goes out of the nucleus, and is used as a blueprint to build the proteins that particular genes code for. mRNA does not get incorporated into the genome. It doesn’t change your DNA. It isn’t inherited.
Think of it like a library full of cookie recipes. DNA are the actual recipe books. We keep them locked up in the library so people don’t fuck them up. You can go in and get photocopies of specific pages and take them with you. Those mRNA. You use the information on those pages to make cookies (proteins) at home. The photocopies are made out of really weak, crumbly paper, and your body will break them down over time. The proteins they made will eventually wane too. The library books themselves remain unchanged.
Every structure and function within your body starts with folded proteins which do everything from forming tissue and organs to modulating chemical reactions within cells.
DNA are long strings of protein building/folding instructions. Cells make mirror copies of one side of the DNA string, called RNA. RNA passess through ribosimes, organelles within the cell, that use the bit-by-bit instructions to build and fold proteins which carry out cellular functions.
DNA exists in human cells and is made of 4 protiens, Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine. These are often expressed as A,T G and C respectively, and that’s why a string of genetic code is often shown as a string of these letters ex: ATGATCTAG.
Each of these binds to one other of the protiens to make the double helix structure of DNA, so to get all the data, you really only need one side of the helix, this is often referred to as RNA. Messenger RNA is a kind sent out by your nucleus telling your cells what proteins to make, based on what protiens are coded for, different traits may emerge (Skin tone, eye color etc).
Viruses exploit this protein making system by injecting their own RNA into living cells, hijacking them to force them to make more viruses. This does not effect the DNA of the cell or in the case of multicellular beings, the DNA of the whole creature, especially because the cell dies in the process.
These new Mrna vaccines work by making specific proteins that exist in the virus to train the body in much the same way as a traditional dead or weakened strain vaccine does.
TLDR: We aren’t altering human genetic code to use the vaccine, because we aren’t injecting DNA
your childen will get the DNA of your testicles/ovaries, and the RNA of the vaccine doesn’t get there, and even if it did, there are no enzymes there to do anything with the RNA
You have genetic material put inside your body all the time. If you eat food then youre probably ingesting genetic material.
Remember that just because something is DNA doesnt mean your body is going to do anything with it. Think of the DNA like its a CD, just because you put a CD into a machine doesn’t mean its gonna begin playing music. If the machine is a woodchipper then its not really gonna be affected much. Thats kinda what its like when you put random genetic material into your body.
When it comes to vaccines that is generally a super weakened virus (or dead one) thats training your body to be able ti fight it. Think about it like a tutorial level in a video game where you show what the bad guys are. There certainly is genetic material in those viruses, along with proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Genetic material is just one of the things that organic stuff is made of.
And finally keep in mind that the only place where genes affect your kids is in your sex organs. You can replace the DNA of every other cell in your boy but if you don’t change the sex organs specifically then it wont matter. The instructions for making a human are all there already, its not like it pulls from all over the body to assemble DNA for how to build each body part.
The mRNA (messenger RNA) is like a set of instructions to give to your cells for how to build things (proteins). It’s like an IKEA furniture instruction pack. These instructions come from the design plans (your DNA). They are put into action by your cell (like when you follow the instructions and make a table).
But the mRNA cannot affect your DNA just as if you decided to make your own furniture instructions and then mail it into IKEA, it isn’t going to change the design plans they have stored on their computer.
Human DNA is very well protected against mutation with a range of capabilities to ensure very high fidelity and error checking. This is like an antivirus software, backups and a firewall at the IKEA design centre protecting the original designs for the table.
Basically this idea that mRNA can mutate human DNA is just plain nonsense.
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