I don’t even know how stupid this question is. I was just watching [a video](https://www.sartorius.com/en/applications/biopharmaceutical-manufacturing/vaccines/vaccine-development/mrna-vaccines) on how mRNA vaccines are designed to work and I fully admit my biology is disgustingly rusty.
My main question is if we are injecting the blueprints instead of the protein itself, how are we preventing the body from taking that blueprint *everywhere* and having it be overwhelmed by the vaccine production–preventing it from producing other key and important proteins/stuffs in the body? Aren’t there areas of the body we don’t want producing this protein (like the heart or brain maybe)? How do we avoid the blueprint from getting there?
I feel like the answer is obvious, but I don’t know what to research. I’d love to understand this better.
In: Biology
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Your question stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the mRNA vaccine process works.
The vaccine does not work like gene therapy (which is what you are essentially describing: a change to the body where the very function of cells on a widespread level takes place). When you get the mRNA vaccine it doesn’t turn *all* your cells into little spikey attack balls that will fight COVID-19 or any such thing.
What *does* happen is that the injected mRNA enters *some* cells in your body, which read the mRNA like a little bit of source code and “compile” it. In doing so they make some protein spikes that our bodies then see and go “HEY WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?” and have an immune response to.
Eventually, the absorbed mRNA is destroyed by the host cell (the “source code” package it was using to make the spike “program” is gone at this point).
In a perfect world, our body would maintain a perfect memory of that “fake COVID” infection and always be ready to fight off reinfection. But as of now, we don’t know how long the immunity from the new COVID-19 vaccine will last. It might end up being a once a year shot or something we get a booster for every five years or it could be that enough people have enough lasting immunity that only at-risk people or people with impaired immune systems end up needing boosters.
Either way, the vaccine does not lead to random cells in your body (like your neurons or cells in your eyes) making protein spikes or cells in your body making the protein spikes indefinitely. The mRNA is like a computer program uploaded and run a certain number of times to produce and outcome and then discarded.
I know what you mean because I’ve thought about it too. At any given moment there are millions of distinct mRNA strands in your body to produce millions of different proteins and enzymes. Adding just one more won’t really make much of an impact. They also don’t inject very much into you. I could see that if you injected gallons concentrated mRNA it might reduce the ability of your body to produce the proteins it needs, but this is 0.3 mL or 0.06 tablespoons.
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