DNA is read sequentially base-by-base (essentially like the read head on a HDD) by a protein called RNA polymerase. As it is reading, it produces RNA. If that RNA is meant to become a protein, it is post-processed to remove various bits and becomes a messenger RNA (mRNA). This mRNA is inserted into another huge protein called the Ribosome[2], and is read 3 bases at a time. Each set of 3 bases corresponds to a single Amino Acid. The string of amino acids produced by the ribosome is a protein.
So the mRNA in the vaccine simply contains the instructions to produce a copy of the spike protein from the COVID-19 virus. When your body produces enough copies of that protein, your immune system takes notice that a foreign protein is floating around and begins the process to recognize and memorize it for future use. (that last part is super simplified).
It’s nowhere near as difficult to make as the article may imply, though. Yes, that first-generation route is quite a doozy, involving some harsh conditions (multiple steps at -78° C, which is actually not as difficult to carry out at the bench as it sounds) and nasty reagents, especially n-BuLi, which explodes into flames upon exposure to air. But it’s fairly easy to carry out on a small scale in a typical med chem lab. If you’re a medicinal chemist and need to make limited amounts, say, maybe in the hundreds of milligrams—which would probably be far more than enough to do preclinical studies—then that route will do. But it definitely can’t be scaled up easily to multi-thousand gallon chemical reactors, although like the article says, that’s where the process chemists come in. The second-generation route looks much better, and I’m sure it’s already being optimized even further.
> For some people this money could be incredibly important.
That's exactly the problem. In Human Subjects Research this might be considered a violation of Informed Consent in the form of undue influence. From the Belmont Report [1]:
An agreement to participate in research constitutes a valid consent only if voluntarily given. This element of informed consent requires conditions free of coercion and undue influence. Coercion occurs when an overt threat of harm is intentionally presented by one person to another in order to obtain compliance. Undue influence, by contrast, occurs through an offer of an excessive, unwarranted, inappropriate or improper reward or other overture in order to obtain compliance. Also, inducements that would ordinarily be acceptable may become undue influences if the subject is especially vulnerable.
Note the "especially vulnerable" part at the end there.
> > For some people this money could be incredibly important.
> That's exactly the problem.
I thoroughly disagree, and I feel like speaking up about this particular philosophy of consent.
If I buy a used iPhone for $100 from someone who would die if they didn't get the $100, have I acted unethically? Whereas if I bought it from someone who didn't really need the $100, I wouldn't be acting unethically?
This sounds not only wrong, but highly counter-productive to me, since the consequence of not entering into this trade, just because the seller really needs the money, is that the seller dies. How does that make any of us better off?
As a society, we should encourage trading with people who really need the money, not label it as unethical. Whether a trade is unethical or not can be determined solely from the trade itself, not how much either (or both of the parties) needs the proceeds from the trade.
Example illustrating the absurdity: imagine two people who both really need the proceeds trading with each other. Ouch! According to your philosophy, they are both acting unethically (when in fact they are doing the only reasonable thing).
> If I buy a used iPhone for $100 from someone who would die if they didn't get the $100, have I acted unethically?
In some cases, you have clearly acted unethically. For instance, if the iPhone is worth $800 and you have more money, but you're getting the $100 price because the man is dying now and there's nobody else around to offer him more than $100.
Doesn’t this argument give us child labour and sweat shops? Fortunately most places have laws that set a minimum standard to protect society against those who have lower ethical standards.
So say I don't buy the iPhone because I consider it unethical to pay only $100, but since I don't actually need a new phone, I'm not going to pay $200+. The seller dies because they were $100 short of some essential medicine they needed, or whatever. Is this really the outcome you want to see?
In an ideal world, I would just pay the person $100 and not take their phone—but, c'mon, this isn't the world we're living in. People die every day in the US—never mind the rest of the world—because they couldn't afford medicine/shelter/food/etc
You're contriving a situation where the seller doesn't have any other options AND you also don't have any ability to buy it to later sell at a profit (which would give the seller the ability to negotiate a better price than $100 with you while still allowing you a reasonable profit when you sell it).
I agree you can contrive a situation where the best ethical option is to pay the seller $100 for the phone but you really have to work on it (and the situation is pretty contrived to begin with)
And if I have enough money, work in tech and still value $20 more than the (additional) data I give up? Especially knowing what's already collected the difference isn't necessarily that big. Am I not allowed to give consent then?
You are correct, however with new sequencing technologies like the MinION[1] we have access to real-time sequencing in something roughly the size of a cell phone.
They are still in development and there are some technical hurdles, but before too long cheap, fast, and accurate strain typing should be ubiquitous. The next issue is then creating the specific phages, but the first stage is pretty close at hand.
And the final issue will be actually getting this in the field for non laboratory personnel. Where a GP can fashion a phage in their office and/or order one as easily as the right antibiotic.
Good luck trying to even get the bacterial sample to do it for quite a few kinds of infections. Lungs and other organs would need a good biopsy or at least really well done aspiration, handling of samples is very messy.
It is a good method to use in hospital settings perhaps where you want to sample anyway.
Absolutely agree with #3. R is by far the most accepted and expected implementation language for statisticians. I remember reading a blog post where the author had submitted a manuscript to a statistics journal that ended up being rejected, in part, because he had implemented the code in julia instead of R.
I use python for most things, but there are so many packages that can only be found in R (especially in the bioinformatics world), so it becomes a necessity.
Ubuntu doesn't ship with pip or virtualenv. In fact it ships with a version of Python where the built-in equivalent to virtualenv, pyvenv, is explicitly disabled.
So you have to install extra Python packages, as root. You have to have that Python experience that guides you to install as few of them as you can, just enough so you can get started with a virtualenv, so you don't end up relying on your system Python environment.
And this is really hard to explain to people who aren't deeply familiar with Python. "Never use sudo to install Python packages! Oh, you got errors. We obviously meant use sudo for two particular packages and never again after that."
In the terrible case where you don't have root, you have to ignore Ubuntu's version of Python and compile it yourself from scratch. Hope the right development libraries are installed!
Maybe I'm wrong and there's a method I've overlooked. If there is: please show me how to install a Python package on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 16.04, without ever using sudo, and I will happily spread the good news.
That sounds like a major problem with Ubuntu, rather than with Python or pip.
On Windows, meanwhile, the standard Python installer gets all this set up properly in like three clicks. Better yet, because it installs per-user by default, "pip install" just works. And if you still choose to install it globally, it will fail, but it will tell you exactly what you need to do to make it work:
Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: ...
Consider using the `--user` option or check the permissions.
One can't help but wonder how we ended up in a situation where the most popular Linux distro somehow does Python worse than Windows.
Don't despair, in the Anaconda installed with visual studio (now a default) you can't update or install packages without being admin! And if you install Anaconda again it merges the start menu entries and you can't tell which is which...
Eh, that has always been the case for windows vs linux, that you don't have to compile anything yourself because there is always an installer that will deploy precompiled binaries for whatever you want to install (except for when there isn't, because nobody has compiled it for windows, at which point you're in deeper shit) (or except when something installs itself but doesn't update your envars, so you have to do it yourself, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "installer" thing).
Iiish. For small projects or when you want to get development versions etc that are not in a distro's repos it's pretty common to have to do a make-configure.
Then again, with Python in particular, I have often had errors either with pip-install, or after "successful" installation, for various reasons.
In this case, we were talking about Python itself. I don't see any particular reason why most people should need to build it themselves, whether on Windows or on Linux. Packages are another matter, but here the issue is the way Python itself is packaged on Ubuntu.
You shouldn't need to replace the glass/LCD to replace the battery on the 6P. Once you get the back off (which is definitely not easy, the battery is exposed.
So the mRNA in the vaccine simply contains the instructions to produce a copy of the spike protein from the COVID-19 virus. When your body produces enough copies of that protein, your immune system takes notice that a foreign protein is floating around and begins the process to recognize and memorize it for future use. (that last part is super simplified).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_dogma_of_molecular_bio...
[2] https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Rib...