[Opinion] The promoter of mRNA vaccine wins the Nobel Prize! Once a relatively unpopular research

[Rina123RS]

The 2023 Nobel Prizes will be announced in various fields one after another. According to tradition, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will be announced first. It will be awarded by Hungarian-American Dr. Katalin Karikó and American scientist Weisman. Dr. Drew Weissman received a total of awards.

This is also the first time that the Physiological Medicine Award has been awarded to the fields of virology, neuroscience and paleontology in recent years to a scientific field that has made a significant contribution to the COVID-19 epidemic. The main wish is to commend the mRNA nucleoside modification technology developed by Carrico and Weismann. Because of this technology, the mRNA vaccine can become a reality.

mRNA vaccine promoter wins Nobel Prize.jpg
Photo by nobelprize
The Nobel Prize is the world's most prestigious academic award, and there are many potential restrictions on recipients' eligibility. There are underlying rules such as no duplication of prizes as much as possible, no more than three people sharing the prize, and the Nobel Prize hopes to reward major advances in basic science rather than high-profile technological applications, so there are many award-winning researchers. , it even took four to fifty years after the study was published to gain recognition. Therefore, the mRNA vaccine development technology can win the award so quickly. Even the award-winners Carrico and Weisman thought it was "quite surprising."

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What is mRNA?
To clearly explain the role of mRNA, we must first start with the more familiar genetic material DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA is a huge molecule composed of four bases (A, T, C, G respectively) and five-carbon sugars. The DNA in most eukaryotic organisms has a double-stranded helix structure and is found in the nucleus. It is quite stable and unstable. It is easily destroyed, so it is suitable for carrying large amounts of genetic information. Even if the organism becomes a fossil, DNA molecules can often remain stable.

However, DNA, which carries genetic information, does not directly india telegram participate in various biochemical reactions in the body. DNA needs to produce various proteins through the process of transcription and translation in order to actually affect and control various biochemical reactions in the body. The "central dogma" proposed by Dr. Francis Crick, a British biologist who also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine a hundred years ago, mentioned that in order to produce the required proteins, DNA The process of transcription will form a set of mRNA based on the gene sequence corresponding to the target protein.

DNA is transcribed into mRNAjpeg
National Library of Medicine
mRNA can be understood as a set of notes that briefly transcribes the gene sequence, so it is also called "messenger ribonucleic acid" , and m means messenger. This is a single-stranded small molecule. Compared with DNA, mRNA is a very unstable molecule. It accounts for about five percent of all RNA (ribonucleic acid) in the body. It is the type of RNA with the shortest half-life. After synthesis, It will break down within minutes to hours. The only function of mRNA is to carry the genetic information of DNA from the nucleus to the ribosomes in the cytoplasm for translation to produce proteins.