Guest Post from NDs For Vaccines: mRNA Vaccines

This post is shared with permission from the blog, “NDs for Vaccines,” which is a group of naturopathic doctors discussing health, medicine, and vaccines. It was written by Maxwell Cohen, ND, who also volunteers for Boost Oregon as a medical educator and member of our Medical Advisory Board.

MRNA VACCINES - NEW TECHNIQUE, SAME IMMUNE RESPONSE

Recently there has been a lot of attention on two of the newest immunizations developed to aid in the fight against COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2). These vaccines employ a relatively new technique of using messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, to help our immune system create immunity against SARS-CoV-2. 

To better understand this type of immunization, let’s take a look at the cellular biology behind it, and see how it works to give you an immune response against SARS-CoV-2. These explanations rely on some fairly advanced cellular biology concepts, but we’ll try to keep it as straightforward as possible. For an even more detailed look at this topic, check out Edward Nirenberg’s excellent discussion of this topic, which we’ve linked in the footnotes at the end of the article.(1) 

What is mRNA?

mRNA is a type of RNA that contains instructions from the DNA in your genome.(2) DNA lives in the nucleus of a cell, and RNA is created by cellular machinery that reads the DNA, turns it into RNA and ships it outside of the nucleus into the cell’s workshop, a compartment called the cytosol.

Once it’s on the cell’s workbench, the other molecular machines read the RNA and turn it into a protein. After the protein is created the mRNA is degraded and digested by a clean-up crew of enzymes, so its components can be recycled. 

Please read the rest of this article on the NDs For Vaccines Blog.