The mRNA of the new coronavirus vaccine can be reverse transcribed into DNA. Are genetically modified humans coming?

Recently, the latest research from a Swedish university showed that the COVID-19 vaccine mRNA can be reverse transcribed into DNA. This explosive news instantly became a hot topic and became the subject of discussion. After all, in the past two years, we have been told that mRNA vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna, will not integrate with human cell DNA. Now that the Swedish University has confirmed this news, what impact will this event have on humans? Are genetically modified people coming? Let's talk about this with you today.

01. Are the conclusions of Swedish universities reliable?

First of all: This conclusion is reliable, but it may be different from what everyone knows.

What is the conclusion? mRNA vaccines can be reverse transcribed into DNA. But is it integrated into the genome? Unknown.

In fact, what is even more surprising than this article is another article published in PNAS, which argues that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be integrated into the genome.

The mRNA vaccine itself uses a fragment (spike) of SARS-CoV-2, so this risk cannot be ruled out.

Let us introduce it step by step below.

02. mRNA vaccine is reverse transcribed into DNA

At the beginning, let us briefly talk about a concept: reverse transcription is the process of synthesizing DNA using RNA as a template, that is, DNA synthesis under the guidance of RNA.

It is the important reverse arrow in the central law, which makes up for the defects of the central law.

Howard Martin Temin was awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this.

In fact, when the new crown mRNA vaccine first appeared, someone raised this question. Even before that, people were worried about this problem, worried that mRNA would be reverse transcribed into DNA, which would be a bit troublesome.

Although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on its official website: "Our cells break down and clear mRNA within a few days after vaccination with the mRNA vaccine," this statement, in the eyes of serious professionals, can only be said to be flattering.

Because, no matter what kind of mRNA vaccine it is, it is essentially mRNA, so there is no way to rule out the problem of reverse transcription into DNA by reverse transcriptase in the body, so mRNA vaccines only existed in "concepts or laboratories" before the COVID-19 outbreak, and had not entered the clinic. With the COVID-19 outbreak, mRNA vaccines were forced to take the stage, breaking through many limitations at once and entering the human population, so it is inevitable that attention will be paid to their reality.

Last year, PNAS published the first study on the reverse transcription of SARS-CoV-2, and found that SARS-CoV-2 was reverse transcribed into DNA.

This time, the research published in "Current Issues in Molecular Biology Journal" once again confirmed this conclusion: mRNA is indeed reverse transcribed into DNA.

Detection of DNA amplicons of BNT162b2 in Huh7 cells treated with BNT162b2.

What this paragraph means is that using DNA amplification, it was found that DNA fragments after reverse transcription of the BNT162b2 vaccine appeared in Huh7 cells.

So, at this point, there is actually another question: Does the reverse transcribed fragment exist in a free state or is it integrated into the genome?

03. Controversy: Free DNA or integrated into the genome?

Is DNA free or integrated into the human genome? This question is even more critical. That is, both studies have confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA vaccines will be reverse transcribed into DNA.

If it is the former, it is not bad, after all, there is still a lot of free DNA in the human body, and we have used a lot of it. For example, there is free DNA in cancer. But, what if, I say, this DNA is integrated into the genome? That would be troublesome. This is the point that the two articles are controversial about.

In the 2021 PNAS article, the authors demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 was indeed integrated into the genome.

Chromosome 12

On chromosome 15

Chimeric genome A

human–viral chimeric read pair supporting viral integration.

However, in this latest article, no integration into the genome was found (because chromosome sequencing was not performed), only reverse transcription was observed.

04. What does the above mean and what consequences will it have?

1. Let's first talk about reverse transcription into DNA. This means:

The advantage is that mRNA vaccines may not degrade so quickly. After all, after being reverse transcribed into DNA, it is more stable and can be transcribed again, so it can be effective for a long time.

The disadvantage is: a piece of DNA that stays for a long time will continue to have an impact, which is a consumption for immunity, and over-immunity is not a good thing.

2. But what about integration into the genome? That is a very dangerous thing.

1. Where will the DNA be inserted into the genome?

This is a very dangerous thing. I mentioned this issue before when I talked about GMOs. When we do GMOs, we are more worried about random insertion. In fact, even today, CRISPR Cas9 still has this problem.

That is, the safe area you think it is inserted into may not be safe, and it may even randomly insert into other locations. If it is inserted into a gene, it will be embarrassing, and it may destroy the gene function and cause serious diseases.

When doing genetic modification, you will encounter the problem of having to do a lot before you can find one or two. In addition to the difficulty of integrating into the genome itself, there is a greater problem of inserting into the gene, causing the gene to be destroyed and then unable to survive.

2. Stable inheritance.

Integration into the genome means that it can be stably inherited and passed down from generation to generation.

This is even more troublesome. To this day, we still have a strong awe of the human genome, because humans have evolved for so many years to form more than 3 billion base pairs. If you artificially add DNA fragments into it, it means that genetically modified humans have appeared.

This is a very scary thing. But if it really happens, there is nothing we can do about it. After all, there are about 10% viral genes in the human genome. I just didn’t expect that we would actually witness an epic process!

Therefore, the core controversy of these two studies is: Is it integrated into the genome?

05. Additional Notes

Here is an additional explanation, why are these two articles put together? Because mRNA vaccines essentially put part of SARS-CoV-2 on the mRNA vaccine vector.

There are common fragments in both, and if they can be integrated, there is no essential difference in theory, so we need to pay attention to it.

However, on the other hand, since SARS-CoV-2 can be integrated, there is nothing wrong with the integration of mRNA vaccines.

By the way, both articles have sparked controversy in the industry. Everyone believes that their research methods may have some problems and need to be improved.

Looking forward to more research. However, biology is a cure for all diseases, so there is no need to panic. After all, the current COVID-19 is an objective risk, but who knows about the long-term risks?

What we are using in our country now are inactivated vaccines and subunit vaccines, one of which is a dead virus and the other is a protein, so this problem does not exist.

2022 paper: mRNA is reverse transcribed into DNA, but whether it is integrated into the genome is not studied

Aldén, Markus, et al. "Intracellular Reverse Transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 In Vitro in Human Liver Cell Line." Current Issues in Molecular Biology44.3 (2022): 1115-1126.

2021 paper: SARS-CoV-2 is reverse transcribed and integrated into the genome.

Zhang, Liguo, et al. "Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA can integrate into the genome of cultured human cells and can be expressed in patient-derived tissues." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118.21 (2021).