The Sars-COV2 virus has 29 proteins. Just 29. But one of those proteins, the so-called spike protein, is the one that allows that virus to enter human cells.  Before some bat mutated the protein, it could only enter bat cells, but then a small mutation allowed that protein to unlock human cells and now we have this pandemic.

It is hard to imagine but within days of discovering the virus we had the genetic sequence mapped and the precise code to make those spike proteins. When I was in graduate school, it would take an entire year plus to determine the sequence of a genome, but now, with technology we can do it in days – not months.

When I was in graduate school at The University of Chicago many of the founders of modern molecular genetics were still alive, and I was happily in the laboratory of one of the virologists, Dr. Bernard Roizman, who was the first generation of molecular geneticists after the founders. Founders like Francis Crick, Arthur Kornberg, Joshua Lederberg,  (when I was doing research at Stanford I became good friends with his ex-wife Esther Lederberg who, should have received the Nobel prize but she was a she and, well, you know).

Bernard Roizman, my science mentor- where I spent many wonderful years in his lab

They worked hard in their laboratories, and they could party. But oddly, they didn’t party like you think – the molecular biologists would hang out in a corner (like nerds do at parties) and playing with bits of string show how DNA worked, or find a blackboard and write about how RNA worked. They would get excited about what the future would hold. How molecular biology would provide answers and cures to diseases. They would even speculate about how it would happen. The non-nerds of the party, their significant others or dates for the night – they would drink and dance and listen to the music while the nerds (people like me) would be off in a corner, maybe get through one beer at the night but more interested in talking to like-minded nerds.

Before I go into the podcast transcript, or you listen to the podcast I want to dispel myths of mRNA vaccines. I am excited by these, because I was

Myths of mRNA vaccines

It won’t change your DNA. mRNA never changes DNA it is in a different part of the cell than the DNA is and the mRNA breaks down rapidly. I know this won’t change the mind of the most reverent anti-vaccination type, but this is an impossibility.

The use of freezers is needed for the lipid solubility. Every hospital has them because every hospital deals with these kinds of biologics. This is not the first biologic agent hospitals use that requires intense freezing (like that of dry ice) .  Hospitals have this equipment and use it. Once the vaccine is out of the freezer you have five days to use the vial.

There will be more, but the point of this podcast is more about – this is the most exciting new therapy with a new technology and I hope you catch my excitement.

There will always be those who say “I want it tested” – well it has been. And the with a greater degree of testing and double blinded testing than any drug (including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin) and greater safety. Then again – my beautiful nerd friends – if you are listening to my podcast, taking this vaccine is not an issue.

Podcast Transcript

Messenger RNA. When I was a young man doing some research at Stanford, one of the people I got to meet was Esther Lederberg whose husband won the Nobel prize. And by all rights, she should have shared that Nobel prize with him. But she told me about the parties they used to have back in those days, when all of these founders of molecular biology would get together and they would have these Epic parties and all of the people who were in the research will be all talking and stammering over what was going to happen in the future. As they were determining how DNA would become molecular biology and solve diseases in the future, she would describe how they would get together. They would talk over one another and all the people who weren’t scientists would be off just having a gay, old time drinking and listening to music and dancing.

But these guys were practically spitting on each other. They were so excited as to what the future would bring. And interestingly enough, when I was doing some background research about this topic, which is about messenger RNA, virus vaccines, I was looking over the history of it. And it talked about this Epic party, this Epic party that occurred in Francis Crick’s house. Now, Francis Crick, when the Nobel prize with James Watson for the discovery of the structure of DNA. But again, same thing. All these people together excited talking and all of the people who were their spouses or significant others who were not in microbiology were off drinking champagne, listening to music. And these guys were all together, drawing things out on blackboards and all excited while everybody else was having, you know, a party. Well guess what? It’s 2020. And while it has been a crummy year, this is the year when all of the things those people were thinking about. All of the promise of molecular biology has come true. And that’s the story I’m going to tell you today. My name is Dr. Terry Simpson, and this is your doctor’s orders, the busting myths and spreading science virally.

So probably by the time this comes out the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine will have been approved. And the anti-vaxxers will say, Oh my God, mRNA, and a it’s going to intercalate in your DNA and you’re going to change. Have you ever noticed when people say you’re going to change is always in a bad way. They never say you’re going to change. And you’ll be like, Spiderman that we say you’re going to change and grow a horn or something.

Anyway, first of all, that’s not the way it works, but I want to tell you why this was such an important scientific breakthrough that brought the promise that all of those people, all of whom by the way, have long gone and are deceased saw. So what is messenger RNA? So you probably known that for you, your code, your program, that determines everything in your body is DNA and DNA sits in the nucleus of the cell, but to make proteins, the DNA doesn’t make proteins. It sends a little carbon copy of itself out on something called RNA, exports it out of the nucleus, into the cytoplasm of the cell. And it makes protein. That’s how you make protein. And these scientists had this idea 50 years ago, 50 years ago, that if you could take those little bits of mRNA and put them into human cells, you can make the human cells make whatever protein they needed to make and solve and cure of disease that didn’t, wasn’t able to make that protein.

That’s what happened. The messenger RNA is exactly that these vaccines from Pfizer and Medina are vaccines made of messenger RNA. So what happened is within a month, within a month of having this virus, we had the genetic code of the virus that we headed out. And then we found the part of the virus, that little spike part that you see on the virus, the part that’s responsible for getting the virus into our cells. We knew what protein that was. We had the code for it.

What these brilliant scientists did is they made it into messenger RNA. They packaged it into this little globule of fat and they’re able to inject it. And your body takes that globule of fat. It brings it into a cell. The messenger RNA is released. It makes copies of this specific protein. And then your body makes antibodies against that.

Sounds kind of neat.

Here’s why that’s important because when you’re making antibodies to these specific part of the virus, you have a high chance of getting a very effective vaccine. And it is.

For those of us who know about this field and how exciting it is. And now you, the listener mRNA, we can specifically say what part of the virus we want to make antibodies to, and it can make antibodies to it.

Now, I want you to contrast that with influenza virus, how do we make a vaccine from influenza? We grow the virus in eggs. We kill the virus and we inject it in people and your body makes antibodies against that virus, but it’s really nonspecific. And by that, I mean, I want you to think of star Wars. Do you remember on the first episode of star Wars where all these little tiny cruising ships were going up and the big mother ship, what was that big mothership called? I have a producer here who knows star Wars. What was the big ship called that they had to hit the, was it the millennium Falcon or something?

I don’t know. Anyway, hon, that wasn’t Han solo. It was Luke Skywalker was the one who used the force and put his little ship in the right position and dropped his bomb in the specific area of that ship. And the entire ship blew up and they won against all odds because it went to a specific part in that ship. Now, there are plenty of other cruisers out there. Most of them got slaughtered by the way from the empire, but they were trying to hit the whole of the ship and the windows of the ship and the deck of the ship. And they didn’t do hardly any damage or they did some, but not enough.

The Devastator the one Luke Skywalker destroyed – lego version because my wife and son love Legos

The ship is like the virus, the specific place in the ship that we want to hit is like that one in a million shot that Han Solo got not Han Solo. I get these guys mixed up, Luke Skywalker got, and that’s what we can do with molecular virology today.

We know the very specific place in that virus that produces the best way of neutralizing the virus. The best way of keeping the virus from entering your cell the best way that we can have antigens against the virus and we can make it, your body actually makes it, and then your body makes antibodies to it. So if you get infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus, the virus had causes of COVID-19. It goes against that very specific place, just like loose Skywalker hits the specific place on that battleship, or maybe it was the empire strikes back in a death star. I don’t know either way. It’s that specific. So do you think we’re excited about this? Oh yeah. Those of us who have been watching the field of molecular virology and biology for years and thinking back of those founding people, Watson and Crick, and Lederberg all of those people who made these discoveries and figured out how it works, that we’re thinking this someday can happen. It happened in 2020.

And if it didn’t happen in 2020, COVID-19 would be a pandemic that would be worse than the Spanish flu. And by 2021, it would have killed more people on the planet earth than the Spanish flu did. And somehow these guys way back when saw it and knew.

That they could do this. And thankfully the technology has now caught up. So that 50 years later, we have an answer. Now it’s not going to stop with COVID-19 because you know what, the next vaccines we’re going to make are the next vaccines we’re going to make are very specific vaccines against influenza. So instead of having 50% efficacy, when you get the flu shot, now it’ll be 95%. Do you know what that means? We can start talking about wiping out influenza types in the world, especially if we can have the anti-vaxxers decided to get vaccinated. And let’s really be clear about this. We can manufacture this type of vaccine quickly, very, very quickly. It’s not like growing virus and eggs and purifying it and doing it. This is very quick in labs and it will not cause autism. And it will not give you a third horn, but it will give you spider powers.

Well, maybe not the mRNA vaccines. The one by Pfizer is the one by Madonna. I can’t wait to get that shot. That is a shot in history. And I can’t be more excited for what this has brought. And for all those people I’ve read about in textbooks and all of that little insight that I had in their parties and how excited they were. They’re all not resting in peace. Now they’re all as excited as hell because maybe that’s where they are because they’re scientists after all that we’ve done it. We’ve gotten there. We have made it and it’s only going to be better. So don’t think any politician before this, thank the people who funded through the NIH basic research that everybody was saying, Oh, we can’t fund basic research. This frog mating season, all of those funny studies, the people made fun of, they led to this.

All right.

So vaccines coming, take it, get it. Stand in line until then wear a mask.

Now I have to do the outro. I can’t believe you did that. That was like flying.