mRNA Vaccines Are Decades Old and Why White Animal Bellies?
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why mRNA vaccines are older than you think; and the scientific theories about why animals have white bellies.
mRNA vaccines are older than you think by Grant Currin
- Dolgin, E. (2021). The tangled history of mRNA vaccines. Nature, 597(7876), 318–324. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02483-w
- Lewis, T. (2021, September 15). An mRNA Pioneer Discusses How Her Work Led to the COVID Vaccines. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-mrna-pioneer-discusses-how-her-work-led-to-the-COVID-vaccines/
- Harvard University. (2021). How mRNA vaccines work [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbaCxIJ_VP4
Why do so many animals have white bellies? Here are the theories by Cameron Duke
- Exhibit Galleries Blog. (2016). Neaq.org. http://galleries.neaq.org/2014/09/countershading-camouflage.html
- Harris, J., & Olivier Penacchio. (2015, October 7). Sunscreen or camouflage? Why so many animals have dark backs and pale bellies. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/sunscreen-or-camouflage-why-so-many-animals-have-dark-backs-and-pale-bellies-48603
- Penacchio, O., Cuthill, I. C., Lovell, P. G., Ruxton, G. D., & Harris, J. M. (2015). Orientation to the sun by animals and its interaction with crypsis. Functional Ecology, 29(9), 1165–1177. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12481
- Penacchio, O., Lovell, P. G., Cuthill, I. C., Ruxton, G. D., & Harris, J. M. (2015). Three-Dimensional Camouflage: Exploiting Photons to Conceal Form. The American Naturalist, 186(4), 553–563. https://doi.org/10.1086/682570
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.4 | Today you learn about why MRNA vaccines are older than you think and why so many animals have white bellies. |
| 0:15.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:17.0 | The COVID-19 vaccines were produced in record time. |
| 0:22.0 | In less than a year, researchers and vaccines were produced in record time. |
| 0:23.0 | In less than a year, researchers and engineers who had never seen the SARS COV2 virus |
| 0:28.5 | managed to develop an innovative vaccine, test it, and start the long process of manufacturing enough of the stuff |
| 0:35.8 | to protect billions of people from dying from the virus. |
| 0:40.0 | So does that mean the vaccine was invented in less than a year? |
| 0:43.7 | Well, not exactly. |
| 0:46.0 | The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been hailed as biomedical breakthroughs |
| 0:50.6 | because they work differently from most vaccines that have been used in the past. |
| 0:55.0 | The shots use a molecule called messenger ribonucleic acid. |
| 0:59.0 | That's MRNA for short. |
| 1:02.0 | MRNA is what your body uses anyway to produce the millions of |
| 1:06.3 | proteins it needs to do what it does. When the tiny MRNA molecules of the COVID |
| 1:12.3 | vaccine are injected into someone's arm, they direct |
| 1:15.7 | some of that person's cells to make off-brand versions of a protein found on the real coronavirus. |
| 1:23.3 | The immune system studies the harmless knockoffs |
| 1:26.3 | to prepare for future encounters with the real thing. |
| 1:30.3 | But here's the surprising part. |
... |
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