It is genetic material but it doesn't get into your DNA and stay there. Those vaccines inject RNA into the cell. The RNA gets expressed into proteins, and then it breaks down. When people talk about genetic engineering, they are typically talking about permanently changing the genome of some host organism, and possibly that of its descendants.

>When people talk about genetic engineering, they are typically talking about permanently changing the genome of some host organism, and possibly that of its descendants.

Maybe I don't understand what is and isn't genetic engineering them. Still it is exciting and amazing thing that is happening.

Huh. Based on your original comment, I thought you were fear-mongering / being conspiratorial. Perhaps the grayed out text biased me to think that.

Whether or not the mRNA vaccine is considered "genetic engineering" (I think it's a confusing usage of the term, if not fully mistaken), I totally misread your intent. I stand corrected.

Do you know how long it takes for the RNA to break down? Is this why they need two shots? I find it very hard to find answers to these kind of questions using search engines.

It doesn't take very long for the mRNA to break down, a few hours.

It's perhaps overly simplified, but the first shot teaches the immune system what to look for and the second shot causes it to prepare a bunch of antibodies that will attack the virus (in some sense, the second shot is a reminder to keep defending against the virus, and the immune system does that by making antibodies).

Is that very fundamentally different from like... eating food?

‘The administration of beef to the stomach delivers genetic materials which are used to create energy to power the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood.’

The main distinction is that saying genetic engineering doesn't convey a shared concept.

The point of language is to convey a shared concept and by saying genetic engineering nobody knows if you are a useful idiot for disinformation campaigns or just being unspecific in a way that nobody uses the term.

"Yes, some COVID vaccines use genetic engineering. Get over it." - Cornell Alliance for Science.

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-some...

I'm glad you found an article that matches an obscure academic use of the term, retroactively, as you started this thread with a question.

That's not what happened.

When I google "vaccine reprogram cells" it is on the first page. So, not sure how obscure it is.

I'm saying you started this thread with a question because you didn't already know the answer

and then you found an academic use of the term that matches your conclusion after being challenged about the obscurity of the use of the term. this is an obscure use of the term "genetic engineering" which would be limited to academic circles.

Interesting. Looks like they're talking about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which uses a reengineered virus as a delivery mechanism.

It also says the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines put mRNA into the cell. But I don't think it say how it's done.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, the host's DNA is not changed during this process. When I think of genetic engineering, I think of "changing the host's genome". What does genetic engineering mean to you?

the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material.

By this definition, the mRNA vaccines aren't genetic engineering. They don't manipulate the organism's genetic material. They borrow the machinery that the organism uses (downstream) when doing stuff with its genetic material.

When I borrow your kitchen to cook my own recipe, I don't alter or even look at your cookbooks.

Isn't adding functional genetic material modifying?

Only in the same sense that navigating to https://news.ycombinator.com modifies your web browser's code.

That is: no, not at all.

An analogy about computer code isn't a valid counter point.

I'm trying to put it in terms this audience might better understand, since said audience doesn't seem to understand it when presented plainly (as has been done already, by various others). Though in hindsight, there's a better analogy:

So when you run a program on your computer, your computer doesn't directly execute that machine code right from the disk; rather, it loads a copy of it into memory first, and then executes that copy. If something changes that running copy (for example, by loading a DLL, or by using something like Cheat Engine to tweak the process memory), the original copy on the disk is untouched.

Likewise, when cells make proteins from your genetic code, they don't do so by "executing" the DNA directly. Rather, they make a copy of (a.k.a. transcribe) the DNA - this copy being "messenger" RNA or mRNA - and then that RNA gets tweaked and spliced and such before eventually making it to a ribosome to be "executed" - i.e. matched up to amino acids to make proteins.

An mRNA vaccine therefore works analogously to a DLL plugin: just like how loading a plugin doesn't change a program's binary as it exists on-disk, the vaccine's mRNA doesn't modify the DNA in your cells' nuclei - it instead goes directly to the ribosomes and gets matched up with amino acids to make proteins, leaving your DNA alone.

mRNA, like a running program, is short-lived; eventually it'll finish running, and then that's that. Since no actual DNA was modified, that's the end of it: the proteins that mRNA coded are all that remain. If more proteins are needed - e.g. for another round of training your immune system to attack SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins - then you'll need a second shot of mRNA, which will again go right to the ribosomes, get matched up with amino acids to make proteins, then that's that.

You're not addressing the point. You are just describing protein syntheses and comparing it to a computer program.

>the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material.

Is mRNA genetic material?

If yes, then is adding mRNA manipulating the organisms genetic material?

Is a process that puts foreign mRNA into people's cells deliberate modification of an organism?

> You're not addressing the point.

I feel like I've addressed it pretty thoroughly. Let's try again:

> Is mRNA genetic material?

As far as eukaryotes (like all animals, plants, etc. - including humans) and most prokaryotes are concerned: no, it is not. mRNA - per above - is a temporary copy of genetic material, not genetic material itself.

> If yes, then is adding mRNA manipulating the organisms genetic material?

No, because the organism's actual genetic material - i.e. the DNA in the cell nuclei - remains untouched.

> Is a process that puts foreign mRNA into people's cells deliberate modification of an organism?

Not in and of itself, no, because merely providing some arbitrary mRNA doesn't necessarily modify the organism itself - and especially not permanently - because (again) the underlying DNA is not modified.

Thank you, that clears the question for me.

> Is mRNA genetic material?

No, genes—well, in humans—are DNA. (RNA viruses and retroviruses have RNA genes.)

mRNA is, somewhat simplistically, a message format between genetic material and protein synthesis machinery. It has a short lifespan, so adding it has no lasting effect of the type that would come from genetic change.

Going to be doing some genetic engineering later tonight then.

Giggity.