It wasn’t just about the money, but about data, or rather the harvesting of data, which, if you want to be a stickler about it, is really also just all about making more money. In an industry that relies on data for much of its product development, digital, pharmaceutical, technical or otherwise, he who holds the most data, calls the shots.

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of genomics. The strides we’ve made in the last 10 years alone have revolutionized our ability to analyze and sequence genetic information, or DNA. DNA is the code to the life that flows through your body and your DNA is unique to you. It is your genetic fingerprint and holds the key to diseases, inherited or otherwise, that you may or still will, suffer from.

With each advance in our ability to decode DNA we move closer and closer to identifying key genes responsible for, well, just about everything that occurs in our bodies. We’ve also discovered that having certain genes misfire can predispose us to certain medical conditions and it is not unlikely that, in the near future, this information will allow us, with a fair degree of accuracy, to determine a person’s life span, and more importantly, invent pathways to intervene around suffering and disease.

So why now and why Covid?

Well, we’re now post pandemic, things have moved on, and Covid tests are now available that can be run at home. All good and well, but what happened to the billions of laboratory run PCR swabs we submitted to earlier in the pandemic? While companies undertook to destroy these, at no point did any testing laboratory issue a clear undertaking to not harvest your DNA from said swab.

During the pandemic, almost every American was subjected to a PCR test, sometimes on multiple occasions. Your details, along with your swab, were sent off to a laboratory for testing. I wrote an article on this topic way back in 2020, warning the public of the potential abuse of their data. You can read that piece here.

To think that an opportunity like this, literally a once in a lifetime present for data harvesting, would have been overlooked, is so preposterously naïve as to be laughable.

Which then raises the following questions;

• Who orchestrated the collection of this data? Was it government based, industry based, or a combined effort.
• Your DNA profile would now reside alongside your personal profile (remember, your details were attached to that swab). Who legally owns this DNA profile?
• Are the companies/government willing to issue an assurance as to the ethical use of this data, thereby ensuring you are not discriminated against, based on your DNA profile?
• As the data would have been illicitly harvested without your informed consent, are these questions simply moot, as no one will publicly acknowledge this?

Make no mistake, this was the DNA jackpot and companies may utilize this data to sell you products, refuse you products, refuse you work, refuse you insurance, withdraw your driving license, confiscate any guns you own (as soon as genes are identified that predispose an individual to violence or mental instability), the list is endless and the data worth an untold fortune.

It is, from a financial standpoint, potentially the biggest haul of the pandemic, a gift that will continue to offer returns to companies and governments until you close your eyes one day for the final time, probably on a predetermined day.

So the issue here isn’t really about “IF” your DNA was harvested from the swab you provided, but rather “WHO” now holds that DNA profile. If you’re considering committing a crime, I’d think twice about it, as that single hair you leave behind at the scene will result in the police knocking on your door. Remember, they don’t have to explain how they found you.

Isn’t this a good thing for our health?

It absolutely should be, if the powers that be could be trusted to act ethically with the data. We could identify individuals who are prone to certain diseases and conditions and intervene at an early stage, potentially saving billions of dollars in healthcare. Sadly, trust and ethics, particularly in the case of healthcare and government, were early victims of the pandemic, as the public was lied to, manipulated and then coerced on multiple levels.

Lets take an example. A gene is identified that can predict with 90% accuracy the onset of Disease X in people over the age of 40. Based on the DNA profiles now on record, filters show that 42 million Americans will contract Disease X in the next ten years. A quick calculation shows that treating, rather than preventing the disease will generate 30 times the profit, versus developing a cure.

Sadly, our healthcare systems are not designed for ethics and philanthropy. For the most part, they are FIAT driven systems that pursue profit as their ultimate goal. Only a naïve, well intentioned simpleton would suggest the above example has anything other than one inevitable outcome and it certainly isn’t cure.

The fact that the data has been harvested without your consent is of course, the ultimate red flag. If the public would have stood to only benefit health wise from the sharing of genetic data, don’t you think we would already have volunteered it? No. Deep down inside, we know we can no longer trust the institutions tasked with our wellbeing. They know that we know.

The post Was Covid Testing Used to Harvest Your DNA? appeared first on Medika Life.

Your data is worth money, a lot of money. And while it might not be immediately apparent how or why companies are mining your data, it’s important to understand that it happens. A lot. You probably agree to it happening every time you click “I Agree” on a website’s Terms and Conditions page. But what exactly are you agreeing to?

Most people assume that when they’re using a free service like Facebook, Google, or Instagram, the company is making money off of ads. And while that is true to some extent, these companies are also making money by selling your data. That’s right, your data is being bought and sold regularly without your knowledge or overt consent. Interestingly, healthcare data is among the most valuable data in the world. It’s been suggested that health data may be worth fifty times as much as personal financial data. And the richest part of your data set might be your DNA.

Ultima Genomics, a new player in the genomic sequence business, announced $600 million in funding and a $100 cost for full genomic sequencing. Here’s the wording from their press release.

Today Ultima Genomics emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that delivers the $100 genome. Ultima’s goal is to unleash a new era in genomics-driven research and healthcare, and it has secured approximately $600 million in backing from leading investors who share this vision.

Let’s talk about the one hundred bucks, but first, add a few zeros. The original approximated cost to sequence the entire human genome was about $1,000,000,000. Over time, these costs have followed almost an exponential path downward. Before these latest technological and pricing innovations from Ultima, the going price for a full analysis was about $1,000. The new $100 cost sets a trajectory that raises a critical question.

Will the cost to sequence a full human genome go to zero?

This is not a frivolous question. The implications are staggering. If the cost of sequencing a full genome plummets to zero, it will open up a new era of personalized medicine and health care. It will also have profound implications for research and our understanding of the human body. And even at $100, the application of genomics to vast areas — from agriculture to medicine — is transformative.

But there is another side to this equation. As genomics becomes more ubiquitous, so does the collection and analysis of our DNA. And with that comes a new set of ethical considerations. When we sequence our DNA, we are essentially giving away our most personal information. This information can be used to diagnose disease, predict disease risk, and even determine paternity. It can also be used to make decisions about insurance coverage and employment. Further, the claims of “depersonalization and deidentification” become much more opaque as these data are in fact, self-identifying.

Call it a Faustian bargain, Pandora’s Box or even the myth of Icarus, our DNA offers secrets to science and business that is becoming increasingly difficult to resist. And that irresistibility may provide us all with critical insights to the path that lies ahead.

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Almost exactly 100 years ago in 1920, hot on the heels of the discovery of x-rays by German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a new machine was introduced into shoe shops across the globe. Called the Fluoroscope or Pedosscope(UK) the device was essentially a portable x-ray machine with a singular and rather ingenious purpose.

The idea was brilliant. Customers could try on a new pair of shoes and pop their freshly shod feet into the Fluoroscope box. The device would then produce an x-ray image of your feet inside the shoes. People were obviously fascinated by the technology and the novelty aspect of the machine made it an overnight winner. After all, no one wants to buy shoes that don’t fit properly. An estimated 10,000 machines were sold in the US, 3,000 in the UK, 1,500 in Switzerland, and 1,000 in Canada before authorities began discouraging their use.

Today we know the dangers of continued exposure to x-rays. In the 1920’s we didn’t. What we had instead, in the 1920s, was a new breakthrough in technology that we bravely (foolishly) embraced with little or no concern for the wider safety implications of the technology. If history is anything to go by, the lessons we should have learned from the Fluoroscope and numerous other then-emergent technologies which now litter scientific literature, were lost. 

Even after the dangers of the Fluoroscope and exposure to radiation were highlighted, the devices persisted in many shoe shops in the US until the mid-1970s, with many choosing to ignore the health warnings associated with prolonged exposure to x-rays. To this day, shoe companies deny any liability for the introduction of the machines.

In reality though, how dangerous was the Fluoroscope? This breakdown of the radiation provided by the devices, courtesy of Wikipedia, offers some insight.

Large variations in dose were possible depending on the machine design, displacement of the shielding materials, and the time and frequency of use. Radiation surveys showed that American machines delivered an average of 13 roentgen (r) (roughly 0.13 sievert (Sv) of equivalent dose in modern units) to the customer’s feet during a typical 20-second viewing, with one capable of delivering 116 r (~1 Sv) in 20 seconds. British Pedoscopes were about ten times less powerful. A customer might try several shoes in a day, or return several times in a year, and radiation dose effects may be cumulative. 

For perspective, a dose of 300 r can cause growth disturbance in a child, and 600 r can cause erythema in an adult. Hands and feet are fortunately relatively resistant to other forms of radiation damage, such as carcinogenesis, but spare a thought for the operators of these devices who were effectively exposed to massive doses of daily radiation.

What does this have to with my DNA?

Great question and if you haven’t joined the dots yet, allow me. Science has been seriously experimenting with DNA-based medications for well over a decade and in many ways, these medicines are seen as a holy grail by the medical community. With good reason. Many diseases stem from gene combinations gone wrong and our ability to deliver treatment at this level will quite literally revolutionize medicine.

Identifying and isolating faulty genes and our ability to turn on or turn off switches in our genetic coding could mean the end of many diseases we have been previously unable to treat effectively. Most promising in the emergent field of DNA-based medicines is the ability of science to produce treatments specific to an individual. No more hit and miss, but something that’s been built and designed just for you. A treatment that can be deployed within a few days, and that, most importantly, is cost-effective. 

In the above scenario, the patient is the clear beneficiary. Covid accelerated the development and deployment of exactly these types of medicine. mRNA vaccines deliver nano-particle encapsulated genetic instructions directly to our cells. For many patients with co-morbidities and the aged, these vaccines were, and remain, a god-send. 

There is however a need to embrace our newfound mastery of the body’s DNA with extreme and urgent caution. Unlike the Fluorscope that may have caused cancerous lesions in a few feet and rendered a few operators barren, DNA is universal and our current understanding of the technology and its encompassing risks rival that of the early x-ray. We are at the dawn of new technology, and if history has taught us anything, circumspection and caution are called for.

Currently, there are no DNA overlords. There is no national or global oversight of the impacts of these medicines on us, no specific guidelines, or rigorous safety mechanisms to ensure that we are not exposed to the devastating side effects of future treatments gone wrong. 

As of now, we are celebrating our initial medical successes and as I write this, new medications are being prepared or have already been released into the market. Medicines that target our cell structures and DNA and as with the Fluoroscope, we are assured the whole process is completely safe. In fact, why not get your child to try it out? 

I for one, would rather my child were barefoot for a while.

The post The Fluoroscope Serves as a Warning for New Medical Technology appeared first on Medika Life.

Many of us, as kids, memorized The Central Dogma of biology the way we memorized the scales. “DNA makes RNA makes protein” we recited as good students. “Do re me”. “Biological information flows along a one-way street” we’d chant to get extra credit or a gold star. 

Most of us are not surprised that music theory dives far deeper and spreads far wider, into alternate scales, chord progressions, counterpoint, and a plethora of foreign terms that would make any scientist proud.

Likewise, The Central Dogma has always been more nuanced than that three-step flow of biological information, DNA makes RNA makes protein. And it was always meant to be less dogmatic than the unfortunate name suggests.

A new paper, published a month ago in Science Advances, shows that human cells can make DNA from RNA, reversing the direction of information flow as we memorized it. But is it really reversed? What did The Central Dogma really say?

It’s a dogma eat dogma world…

The Central Dogma was first articulated by Francis Crick, half of the dynamic DNA duo, he and James Watson. Watson and Crick won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. This was a monumental breakthrough that established this immensely long molecule as the information carrier within all cells.

DNA carries instructions for making proteins, arguably the biological stuff that makes us who we are.

From 1956–1957 Francis Crick gave lectures about his speculations on gene function and how information flowed in biology. The following is the key page from his lecture notes:

Crick called his model The Central Dogma in typically bombastic style. However, when you read his notes above, it is clear that Crick was only articulating a hypothesis about gene function and information flow. In fact, he later acknowledged that he was mistaken and did not truly understand the meaning of dogma, and that it would have been better to call it a “basic assumption”.

The hand-drawn arrows show one set of paths that confirm what we memorized as kids, that “DNA makes RNA makes protein”. However, we see immediately that the Central Dogma is more complex than that simple do-re-mi version.

Crick assumed (since there were no experimental data to support his hypotheses at the time) that DNA could direct the synthesis of DNA (the circle arrow under DNA), that RNA could direct the synthesis of RNA (circle arrow under RNA), and that DNA could directly make protein without an RNA intermediate. Crick also, importantly, drew a dashed arrow going from RNA back (backwards!) to DNA.

The more important part of The Central Dogma is what it claimed cannot happen. We, in our abridged version, say that “information cannot go backwards”. That forwards is “DNA makes RNA makes protein”. But Crick specifically outlined the paths which cannot happen in his hypothesis. Protein cannot direct the synthesis of protein (the circle arrow under protein). And protein cannot direct the synthesis of RNA or DNA.

But note, in the “never” schematic, there is no arrow from RNA to DNA. That is allowed. 

And again, we have the dashed line in the “may be able to have” schematic that goes from RNA to DNA. The reverse of our cherished Central Dogma. Our erroneously memorized and abridged version.

The (Real) Central Dogma, the more complex one, has always considered the RNA to DNA path to be a reasonable possibility.

Filling in the dashed arrow…

It’s one thing to draw arrows. It’s much harder to figure out the nuts and bolts of what makes the arrow go — to find the mechanism that pushes a biological process forward. Just like we can easily draw an arrow from Boston to Chicago. But that arrow doesn’t tell us what mode of transportation we take, how the engine in that vehicle works, the arrangement of stator and rotors for DC or AC current, etc.

For example, let’s look at the circular arrow in Crick’s diagram under DNA. That means that DNA provides the information to make more DNA. How does that work in practice? Recall, none of this was known in 1956 when Crick first proposed this.

It turns out that there is a complex molecular machine, a protein, called a DNA polymerase. This enzyme reads DNA like a template and makes the matching strand of complementary DNA.

Recall that there are two strands of DNA, each strand is made up of a sugar-phosphate backbone, like a chain of identical repeating units, and like a flag, waving at each link of the chain is one of four bases which we abbreviate with the letters A, G, C, or T. Wherever there is an A in one strand of DNA, the complementary strand has a T that matches up with the A like a puzzle piece. Wherever there is a G, it is matched to a C. A base pair. 

The DNA polymerase does this by reading one strand of DNA, and where there is a base, a letter, it builds the second DNA strand with the complimentary base. A to T, and G to C, and vise versa for each. See the illustration below to see how the polymerase makes base pairs as it builds the new DNA strand from the template:

The first DNA polymerase was discovered in bacteria in 1956, about the time Crick was giving his Central Dogma lectures. Quite rapidly, scientists found bacteria had many different types of DNA polymerase, each doing different jobs. One polymerase started the process of copying DNA. Another polymerase finished copying. Yet another polymerase, several actually, repaired damaged DNA.

Our genome has over six billion base pairs, pairs of letters, in each cell in our body. The DNA polymerase must copy all six billion base pairs each time the cell divides since each daughter cell must get an identical copy.

That copying is essential to life, and errors in copying are at the root of many of our most troublesome diseases such as cancer. Therefore, DNA polymerases are among the most studied enzymes, or protein machines, in biology.

One of the things we’ve learned is that the human genome encodes for at least 14 DNA polymerases. 

One of the 14 is called polymerase θ (theta). This is an odd polymerase because it is very error-prone (it lacks the proof-reading ability that other polymerases have), and unlike most polymerases, it doesn’t require a template. When there is a template for polymerase θ, it is not particularly fussy about the quality or quantity of the template. Biologists give this unfussy enzyme a rather judgmental descriptor: promiscuous. Most enzymes (including polymerases) are very precise and picky about the molecule they pair with, unlike promiscuous enzymes such as polymerase θ.

The purpose for such an unusual enzyme as polymerase θ has puzzled biologists for decades. The main hypothesis was that this enzyme’s main job was to repair broken DNA or to help the cell tolerate such extreme damage.

Wrong way on a one-way street…

In 1970, more than a decade after Crick’s Central Dogma lectures, two biologists, David Baltimore and Howard Temin, published papers back-to-back in Nature announcing the discovery of virus enzymes that could go backward from RNA to make DNA.

Baltimore and Temin won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the enzyme now called reverse transcriptase. (Note, we don’t treat Nobel-winners any differently, since they are human and make mistakes like we all do — see here.)

Since the discovery of reverse transcriptases, most thought only viruses had this ability to go the wrong way on a one-way street (most biologists, even, did not get the nuance in Crick’s less-dogmatic Central Dogma model which suggested the possibility).

Now it turns out that polymerase θ in humans has this ability to go the “wrong way” as well. This was shown in experiments in a recently published study where polymerase θ was given only RNA as a template, yet it quite happily went the wrong way and made DNA. Polymerase θ made similar amounts of DNA as a known virus (HIV) reverse transcriptase. 

Even more interesting was the fact that polymerase θ generated DNA at a higher speed when using RNA as a template than when using DNA. Furthermore, the DNA reverse transcribed by polymerase θ was more accurate from an RNA template than from DNA.

Digging even further into the nuts and bolts, this study found polymerase θ bound more tightly to RNA than DNA and this was seen in atomic-resolution structural images (obtained using x-ray crystallography).

Closing the loop on the function of polymerase θ, the researchers found that this unique human DNA polymerase helps DNA repair by using RNA as a template.

Something absolutely fascinating about this seemingly unique DNA polymerase θ is that it is very closely related to the first DNA polymerase discovered in bacteria by Arthur Kornberg in 1956, called polymerase I. When the proofreading function of polymerase I was disabled (to be like polymerase θ), polymerase I could also reverse transcribe. Like polymerase θ. Like virus reverse transcriptases.

The final dogma…

Replication, repair, and maintenance of DNA is a core function in biology. The enzymes responsible for this essential function, DNA polymerases, are so important that they were probably among the first enzymes evolved in the first bacterial cells, and have been conserved even after billions of years of evolution, and remain in the recognizable form today from bacteria to humans.

One of the most important functions is the repair of DNA damage. One way to repair certain kinds of DNA damage is to use RNA as a template. This is the job of polymerase θ. A polymerase that goes the wrong way on a (supposedly) one-way street.

The post Central Dogma has Lost its Dog appeared first on Medika Life.

New emerging research raises important questions and could also potentially affect our understanding of the coronaviruses. To really understand the content of this article, a little refresher course in basic biology is required for reference. I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible and we are going to take a few side roads to arrive at the conclusion. Stay with us as we examine the most studied viruses in the world, discover how they’ve mastered the art of subterfuge, and examine our efforts to stay one step ahead.

A human cell

Although there are many different cells within our bodies, for simplicity we’ll look at a generalized cell structure. A cell consists of three parts: the cell membrane, the nucleus, and, between the two, the cytoplasm. Within the cytoplasm lie intricate arrangements of fine fibers and hundreds or even thousands of minuscule but distinct structures called organelles.

The vaccine manufacturers are at pains to point out that the mRNA they use in their vaccines bypasses our DNA (your DNA is encased within your cell in the nucleus, the purple and deep blue bit in the image below). Vaccine mRNA is delivered directly to the cytoplasm of a cell (the light blue section below), in effect, replicating our cell’s DNA-based processes of making(transcribing) RNA within the nucleus of the cell. Our DNA also releases any messenger RNA it creates into the cytoplasm. 

According to the manufacturers, their mRNA can not be reintegrated into the nucleus and DNA of our cells. in other words, their mRNA cannot cross the nuclear membrane. Everything is restricted to the cytoplasm, as with the coronaviruses, on which their vaccines are molded. Is their explanation consistent with emerging science? 

If you’re still having trouble visualizing cell layout, have a quick look at this article that breaks down cell structure to its basic levels.

The wonders of the viral world

To truly appreciate the complexity and subtle beauty of life and nature, and to appreciate the limitations of our understanding, examine the humble virus and its life cycle. We are toddlers in a new world, just learning to read and the limits of our knowledge are reflected by our vulnerability.

Certain viruses are capable of hijacking our DNA. In fact, it is such a common occurrence, that a small portion of every person’s DNA is comprised of bits of viral code. We carry with us a history book of our ancestor’s brushes with viruses. The human genome is replete with endogenous retroviruses (HERVs, also known as retrotransposons) that have entered the human germline at various times in the evolutionary past and now occupy 8.3% of our genome. 

The HIV virus is perhaps best known for exploiting this mechanism, commandeering our DNA, from where it then orchestrates its attacks. It’s one of the reasons HIV has been so difficult to combat. This is a typical trait of the family of viruses known as retroviruses.

What’s the main difference between these viruses and your standard-issue, run-of-the-mill virus? Two key processes that differentiate retroviruses from standard viruses are reverse transcription and genome integration. Remember we learned earlier that transcription is simply another name in cell biology for ‘making’, so reverse transcription simply means reverse or backward making. Genome integration refers to the ability of these viruses to invade and commander our bodies’ DNA via their RNA, incorporating their genetic material into ours. 

Without becoming too technical, retroviruses are a type of virus in the viral family called Retroviridae. They use RNA as their genetic material and are named after a special enzyme that’s a vital part of their life cycle, namely reverse transcriptase. Simply put, this enzyme allows retrovirus RNA access to the nucleus of our cells. 

You might wonder why we’re headed down this route, as coronaviruses arent classified as retroviruses, but rather RNA viruses. RNA viruses typically invade a cell and conduct their business in the cytoplasm, where they replicate without accessing our DNA. So why the retrovirus thing? Read on, all will be revealed.

Retroviruses are capable of insane amounts of cellular and genetic engineering, processes so intricate and delicate that you cannot but be left in awe at their complexity and ingenuity. Their ingenious design is not apparent until you understand the complex engineering they can undertake to hijack our cells and reprogram our DNA for their own use. For science, these viruses pose a massive headache and it can take decades to develop mechanisms to combat them.

An important part of the retroviral war is the virus’s ability to hide within our cells without being “active”. These stowaways are referred to as latent reservoirs. infected individuals appear completely healthy. You can even pass all the tests science can throw at you and the stowaways will remain undetected. Viruses can also employ another trick to evade the body’s defenses, hiding in plain sight where the body’s natural immune system doesn’t look, so-called “immunoprivileged sites”.

Dormancy can last weeks, months, or years, ensuring the virus survives. In some instances, as with the Ebola virus, and EVD, individuals who test negative for the virus or who are asymptomatic, are in fact contaminated with latent reservoirs of the Ebola virus and can act as vectors for new outbreaks. Coronaviruses are capable of this little trick as well. For instance, in a study, infected men were found to have traces of the SARS-CoV2 virus in their semen, two to three days after recovery. Semen is the perfect hiding place for a virus and it’s one of the places Ebola chooses.

The testes, along with the eyes, placenta, fetus, and central nervous system, are considered to be “immunoprivileged sites”, which means they are protected from severe inflammation associated with an immune response. This is probably an evolutionary adaptation that protects vital structures. Immune cells are prevented from interacting with cells in the testes and the brain by means of blood-tissue barriers(BTB). 

These “immunoprivileged sites” are, in effect, safe zones where viruses may be protected from the host’s immune response, if, and only if, the viruses are able to penetrate the BTB. We know SARS.CoV2 is capable of penetrating these barriers, but don’t as yet understand how it achieves this. This is evidenced by infected cells in the central nervous system. You can read a more detailed explanation of the impact of coronavirus on the brain here.

Let’s examine the mechanism viruses use to pull off their stowaway act, as this involves, amongst other tricks, reverse transcription and this, as we’ll discuss later, may have relevance to the mRNA vaccines. Then we can examine the real reason we’re here, data released in a preprint from Harvard and MIT, entitled SARS-CoV-2 RNA reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome.

The viral magic trick called reverse transcription

Sciencemag first published a reference to the study above in December of 2020 in an article entitled “The coronavirus may sometimes slip its genetic material into human chromosomes — but what does that mean?”. Perhaps the best way to understand how this process works is to examine HIV, one of the most studied and best understood retroviruses on the planet. I also chose HIV as it is not subject to the flurry of conflicting information that surrounds the coronavirus.

You can skip over this, but understanding the processes these viruses use is key to understanding emerging and existing questions relating to mRNA technology.

HIV is called a retrovirus because it works in a back-to-front way. Unlike other viruses, retroviruses store their genetic information using RNA instead of DNA, meaning they need to ‘find’ DNA when they enter a human cell in order to make new copies of themselves. To achieve this, they need to access the nucleus of the cell to get at the DNA it contains. To make this easier to understand we need to examine the structure of HIV to understand what happens. Here’s a graphic to help you visualize how this works.

• HIV specifically targets CD4 cells, the body’s principal defenders against infection, using them to make copies of the virus.

Inside the virus envelope is a layer called the matrix. The core of the virus, or nucleus, is held in the capsid, a cone-shaped structure in the center of the virion. The capsid contains two enzymes essential for HIV replication, the reverse transcriptase and integrase molecules. It also contains two strands of RNA — which hold HIV’s genetic material. HIV’s RNA is made up of nine genes that contain all the instructions to make new viruses.

I’m going to skip over the virus’s attachment and fusing to the cell and focus on what happens after attachment. You can find a more detailed explanation of the HIV life cycle here. 

Reverse transcription and Integration

When HIV RNA enters the cell it must be `reverse transcribed` into proviral DNA before it can be integrated into the DNA of the host cell. HIV uses its reverse transcriptase enzyme to convert RNA into proviral DNA inside the cell.

After HIV RNA is converted into DNA, HIV’s integrase enzyme attaches itself to the end of the proviral DNA strands and it is passed through the wall of the cell nucleus. Once the proviral DNA enters the cell nucleus, it binds to the host DNA and then the HIV DNA strand is inserted into the host cell DNA.

After the proviral DNA is integrated into the DNA of the host cell, HIV remains dormant within the cellular DNA. This stage is called latency and the cell is described as ‘latently infected’. It can be difficult to detect these latently infected cells even when using the most sensitive tests.

Transcription and Translation, the final phase

The cell will now produce HIV RNA (remember, DNA produces RNA) if it receives a signal to become active. Our CD4 cells become activated if they encounter an infectious agent. When the cell becomes active, HIV uses the host enzyme RNA polymerase to make messenger RNA. This messenger RNA provides the instructions for making new viral proteins in long chains. 

The long chains of HIV proteins are cut into smaller chains by HIV’s protease enzyme and are assembled into a new copy of the virus inside the cytoplasm of the infected cell. The new copy of the virus then exits its host and sets off in search of another CD4 cell to infect.

Is the SARS-CoV2 virus capable of accessing the nucleus of an infected cell?

To answer this, let’s start by examining existing literature for older coronaviruses, notably SARS and MERS. What does the scientific literature say about the ability of these viruses to access our DNA? 

The problem we immediately encounter here is the scarcity of research. A lot of the outbreaks for these viruses were small, affecting sample sizes, geographical locations posed challenges in terms of collecting reliable data, and the duration of often isolated and contained outbreaks was brief. Unlike Covid, there was no widespread testing of populations, so even something as simple as suggested mortality rates are skewed for these viruses, as scientists were unable to account for asymptomatic and mild infections in the broader populations.

Now would be the perfect time to underscore the rationale for widespread testing. We can not truly assess the impact of a virus on a population unless we can develop a cohesive data set for a large majority of the group. Say you‘ve’ an island of a hundred thousand people, 1000 are hospitalized and 100 die. Can you claim a ten percent mortality rate for the virus? Absolutely not. Can you ascertain if asymptomatic carriers are transmitting the virus or how long they act as reservoirs? Absolutely not. 

While you can argue that a percentage of this data may be compromised as a result of human error, it remains essential. Testing, as widespread as possible, is critical to forming a proper understanding of any virus and highlighting areas of concern. It’s how investigative research has arrived at the report below. Discrepancies are showing up in PCR tests that cannot be explained away with historical research.

The Preprint

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictitious crime solver, Sherlock Holmes would have felt very much at home in a modern virology setting but may have frowned on the profession’s proclivity for forcing data to conform to accepted models, rather than examining alternate solutions, however improbable. Researchers at MIT and Harvard have uncovered evidence of segments of SARS-CoV2’s genetic material mixed in with ours. They’ve come up with a hypothesis to explain these bits of viral code, backed by in vitro experiments. 

You can access the preprint in the NIH National Library of Medicine, and I have referenced large portions of it below. The paper, “SARS-CoV-2 RNA reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome” is already contentious, simply by its title alone. It’s the scientific version of covid research clickbait and the question we need to ask is does it hold up under scrutiny? Below is the paper’s abstract and I have highlighted portions in bold.

Prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA shedding and recurrence of PCR-positive tests have been widely reported in patients after recovery, yet these patients most commonly are non-infectious. Here we investigated the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs can be reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome and that transcription of the integrated sequences might account for PCR-positive tests. In support of this hypothesis, we found chimeric transcripts consisting of viral fused to cellular sequences in published data sets of SARS-CoV-2 infected cultured cells and primary cells of patients, consistent with the transcription of viral sequences integrated into the genome. To experimentally corroborate the possibility of viral retro-integration, we describe evidence that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs can be reverse transcribed in human cells by reverse transcriptase (RT) from LINE-1 elements or by HIV-1 RT, and that these DNA sequences can be integrated into the cell genome and subsequently be transcribed. Human endogenous LINE-1 expression was induced upon SARS-CoV-2 infection or by cytokine exposure in cultured cells, suggesting a molecular mechanism for SARS-CoV-2 retro-integration in patients. This novel feature of SARS-CoV-2 infection may explain why patients can continue to produce viral RNA after recovery and suggests a new aspect of RNA virus replication.

To test whether SARS-CoV-2’s RNA genome could integrate into the DNA of our chromosomes, the researchers added the gene for reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme that converts RNA into DNA, to human cells and cultured the engineered cells with SARS-CoV-2. In one experiment, the researchers used an RT gene from HIV. They also provided RT using human DNA sequences known as LINE-1 elements, which are remnants of ancient retroviral infections and make up about 17% of the human genome. Cells making either form of the enzyme led to some chunks of SARS-CoV-2 RNA being converted to DNA and integrated into human chromosomes.

This was consistent with the findings of fragmented viral material from the PCQR tests in the general population.

You can begin to see why this paper and research could be viewed as contentious and why it’s been met with resistance. It not only challenges our current understanding of RNA viruses, suggesting the viruses may possess a broader skillset than previously imagined, it also potentially raises new questions relating to the use of mRNA vaccines. If the vaccine mRNA is modeled on a portion of the virus, and the virus is capable, under certain circumstances of reverse transcription, what then of claims by mRNA vaccines that their products cannot contaminate our DNA?

It’s important at this point, to explain that mRNA vaccines don’t reproduce the entire virus in your cytoplasm, they merely create a copy of the spike protein attached to the virus which helps it bind with our own cells. Reproducing a portion of the virus minimizes risk and allows our body the opportunity to mount an early defense against the spike protein when we encounter the SARS-CoV2 virus in the wild. Of equal importance is the length of time for which the vaccine RNA stays viable in the cytoplasm, and we’ll examine this issue towards the end of the article.

What prompted this research?

What prompted these researchers to investigate whether viral RNA could become hardwired into our genomic DNA? Their motive had nothing to do with mRNA vaccines. They were simply puzzled by the growing number of people who were testing positive for COVID-19 by PCR long after the infection was gone. It was known that these people were not reinfected, so where was the viral genetic material the PCQR tests were identifying coming from?

The authors sought to answer how a PCR test is able to detect segments of viral RNA when the virus is presumably no longer present in a person’s body. They hypothesized that somehow segments of the viral RNA were being copied into DNA and then integrated permanently into the DNA of somatic cells. This would allow these cells to continuously churn out pieces of viral RNA that would be detected in a PCR test, even though no active infection existed. 

Through their experiments, they did not find full-length viral RNA integrated into genomic DNA; rather, they found smaller segments of the viral DNA, mostly representing the nucleocapsid (N) protein of the virus, although other viral segments were found integrated into human DNA at a lower frequency. It is important to note that the authors emphasize their results don’t imply that SARS-CoV-2 establishes permanent genetic residence in human cells to keep pumping out new copies, as HIV does.

How has the scientific community reacted?

“This is a very interesting molecular analysis and speculation with supportive data provided. I do not think it is a complete story to be certain … but as is, I like it and my guess is it will be right.” — Robert Galeo, Head of the Institute of Human Virology

“Impressive and unexpected. Because it is all pieces of the coronaviral genome, it can’t lead to infectious RNA or DNA and therefore it is probably biologically a dead end. It is also not clear if, in people, the cells that harbor the reverse transcripts stay around for a long time or they die. The work raises a lot of interesting questions.” — David Baltimore, a virologist at the California Institute of Technology who won the Nobel Prize for his role in discovering RT

“LINE-1 elements in the human genome rarely are active. It is not clear what the activity would be in different primary cell types that are infected by SARS-CoV-2.” — Zandrea Ambrose, a retrovirologist at the University of Pittsburgh

“I’m not yet convinced but it’s believable, solid evidence shows that LINE-1 RT can allow viral material to integrate in people. The evidence of SARS-CoV-2 sequences in people should be more solid, and the in vitro experiments conducted by Jaenisch’s team lack controls I would have liked to have seen. All in all, I doubt that the phenomenon has much biological relevance, despite the authors’ speculation.” — John Coffin, Retrovirologist at Tufts University

What has the paper established

1) Segments of SARS-CoV-2 Viral RNA can become integrated into human genomic DNA.

2) This newly acquired viral sequence is not silent, meaning that these genetically modified regions of genomic DNA may be transcriptionally active (DNA is being converted back into RNA). Note the paper does not confirm this, merely indicates it, their FISH data is not conclusive and more study is required.

3) Segments of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA retro-integrated into human genomic DNA in cell culture. This retro-integration into genomic DNA of COVID-19 patients is also implied indirectly from the detection of chimeric RNA transcripts in cells derived from COVID-19 patients. Although their RNAseq data suggest that genomic alteration is taking place in COVID-19 patients, the point needs to be proven conclusively. This is a gap that needs to be closed in the research. The in vitro data in human cell lines, however, is air-tight.

4) This viral retro-integration of RNA into DNA can be induced by endogenous LINE-1 retrotransposons, which produce an active reverse transcriptase (RT) that converts RNA into DNA. (All humans have multiple copies of LINE-1 retrotransposons residing in their genome.). The frequency of retro-integration of viral RNA into DNA is positively correlated with LINE-1 expression levels in the cell.

5) These LINE-1 retrotransposons can be activated by viral infection with SARS-CoV-2, or cytokine exposure to cells, and this increases the probability of retro-integration.

What questions can we now ask?

The author of this paper is well respected and considered brilliant by his peers. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of the research and although the paper has not yet been subjected to peer review, another consequence of the pandemic, it certainly will be. It is our hope that the results from the research act to spur on further research to eliminate or conclusively show the validity of the suggested mechanisms, both in -vivo and in-vitro. 

It’s well known that in-vivo results don’t always translate when the experiment is transferred to a living host, therefore it’s essential we continue the research to its logical conclusion. The paper raises a number of issues, possibilities that we don’t as yet have conclusive answers to. The mere fact we now have to ask these questions would suggest caution moving forward until we have conclusively addressed potential concerns.

1. Can RNA from an RNA virus, SARS-CoV2, reach our DNA?

It would almost certainly seem so. Whether in one piece or in genetics bits, the virus appears to be finding its way into our DNA. PCR tests are finding the viral genetic material when they shouldn’t. If the mechanism the paper describes is responsible, that is cause for concern. There may prove to be other mechanisms involved we don’t as yet understand, perhaps involving immunoprivileged sites. More research is required.

2. If viral RNA can find its way into our DNA, can the same hold true for synthetic RNA?

It is a possibility that we cannot conclusively rule out, particularly given the fact that synthetic RNA has been engineered to be more resilient and produce more proteins than its less chemically stable natural version. This makes the cell more alert to the presence of synthetic RNA and offers the cell more time to address the foreign body chemically. In other words, the likelihood of whatever processes the natural RNA is subjected to being expressed on the synthetic version, increases exponentially. 

3. Can I infect anyone with this genetic material?

The obvious answer to this is no. This is not the same way in which the HIV virus we learned about earlier operates. These are fragments of RNA, so think of it like a computer program. If you cut the program into sections, those individual pieces may or may not be able to run on their own, but they cannot perform the original function of the program. The paper does not suggest you would become infectious to others.

The statement above does not mean that you would be unable to transmit these segments to other people, simply that the recipient won’t be able to develop covid from the fragments. 

4. Do I need to be worried about this?

Absolutely not. This paper simply explores and deepens our understanding of viruses and reminds us that we are still learning about many aspects of a virus’s life cycle. Viruses are as unique and gifted as we are and each possesses its own toolbox of tricks to ensure its survival. Remember as you sit and read this, an 8th of your body is made of bits of viral genetic code. We’ve done just fine up to now as a species co-existing with viruses and there may very well be a selective advantage to us as a species to incorporate bits of viral genetic material into our own genome. We are still learning and as technology advances, so does our understanding of this infinitely complex system.

5. So where does this leave mRNA vaccines?

mRNA covid vaccines are proving in the short term to be safer and less likely to elicit allergic responses than the more traditional covid vaccines. They also appear efficacious against new strains and can be reverse engineered to address emerging strains far more rapidly than conventional vaccines. The technology is fantastic and holds huge promise for the future of medicine. Do we know what the long-term consequences, if any, will be to us from the use of the mRNA vaccine? No. That’s the honest answer.

It’s too early into the life cycle of this technology to know for sure and we lack detailed long-term evaluations of the impacts on our bodies. The urgency of the pandemic has robbed us of the opportunity to subject these vaccines to rigorous long-term scrutiny (all the covid vaccines, not merely the mRNA vaccines) but let’s not forget, that without the pandemic, we would not have made this leap in technology, perhaps not for another five or six years, perhaps longer. 

So in answer to the question, is there any chance these vaccines could have their RNA incorporated into our DNA, the answer, for now, would have to be this.

We cannot emphatically rule out the possibility and nature says ‘never say never’. It’s one of the reasons we need to proceed with as much caution as possible and Medika strongly supports an individual’s right to choice in the matter of vaccination. Educate yourself and then choose, but understand that in terms of risk, if you are in an at-risk category for covid, the mRNA and other vaccines are a no-brainer. Get vaccinated. 

Compare the risk of death with an almost negligible, unquantified possibility of genetic absorption that may, or may not be deleterious to your health. Then roll up that sleeve and thank your nurse.

The post mRNA Technology, Human DNA and The Traffic Flow of Genetic Material appeared first on Medika Life.

Have you just unwittingly provided one of the billions of DNA samples currently being collected across the globe? If you’ve been tested for Covid then the answer is a definitive yes. The Covid-19 test allows laboratories the opportunity to extract your DNA from the sample you’ve provided. The purpose of this article is not to prove that this is being done, but rather to question why no one has sounded the alarm bells. They should be ringing themselves off the wall and yet, the silence is deafening.

The premise is simple. The opportunity has presented itself. Two of the largest groups intimately involved with fighting the pandemic are government and large pharmaceutical conglomerates. If we have learned anything in the last few months it is that neither are to be trusted and both lack the ethical backbone to resist the temptation.

Why would they want your DNA? The list is as endless and the motivations as diverse as the samples themselves. DNA data is arguably one of the primary currencies of our brave new world. Corporations and governments that control this data can control you and I and quite literally, the world.

The purpose of this article is not spread wholesale panic but to raise awareness. The media and the scientific community have been completely remiss in highlighting this issue.

The value of your DNA

The US government holds a database of unsolved crimes with DNA samples as their only evidence. Somewhere out there, in cities across America, wanted felons are wandering into clinics to get tested for Covid. Do you think this once in a lifetime opportunity is going to pass by unnoticed? Can you imagine the potential savings months down the line to law enforcement? Future criminals have just left their name, address, and DNA at a testing center near you. Homeland Security must be rubbing their hands in glee.

Recently, in 2019, a US state judge forced a public genealogy site, GEDmatch, to allow police to search its entire database of DNA profiles. A detective wanted to find distant relatives of a serial rapist in hopes that their family trees could help him home in on a suspect — even though most of the 1.3 million people who shared their DNA data with the site had not agreed to such a search.

From a monetary viewpoint, access to a collection of DNA on a global or country wide scale would fundamentally shift power bases. It’s not a statement made lightly. Data – and your DNA is essentially data waiting to be interpreted – is our new currency and we now possess the computational power to make sense of it. We can now abuse it as never before.

Mortgages, college applications, work, access to healthcare and more will be determined by the content of your chromosomes. It is already happening across the US and other countries.

Companies can, for instance, refuse you insurance or load your premiums based on genetic markers in your DNA. It’s a simple but very clear example of how your DNA can be used against you. This already happens, as referenced further below in this article.

Your life will almost undoubtedly be dictated by your DNA in the not too distant future as more and more genetic markers are identified. Mortgages, college applications, work, and access to healthcare will be determined by the content of your chromosomes. Get tagged with a gene that indicates alcoholism and good luck getting that mortgage. Your risk profile just went north.

Test positive at birth for a genetic marker that indicates an increased risk of psychotic behavior and your future in politics is almost certainly guaranteed. A joke of sorts but you understand the real-world implications. They are terrifying and they aren’t the subject of science fiction. They are now a scientific fact and the subject of very concerned discussion in the halls of legal academia.

These concerns have led to the creation of LawSeq. A website has been set up with a searchable database of US laws that govern your genetic data. Just to be clear, currently, in the US, your genetic anonymity is almost never guaranteed.

Until recently, the issues we’d faced interpreting or identifying shared traits or markers from DNA samples was an insufficient data set and the means with which to analyze said data. Covid has just solved the first issue and quantum computing and vastly improved computational power are rapidly overcoming the second.

The pandemic has given governments across the globe the opportunity to harvest our DNA on a scale hitherto unimaginable. Never before have so many people handed over their DNA so willingly, apparently blissfully unaware of the potential for abuse. Not a single question has been raised about it. Not by the press and not by the public. Why? The paranoia and panic surrounding the pandemic may be partly to blame. It’s the perfect cover at a pivotal moment in the world.

The Covid-19 test is the ultimate DNA harvesting tool. It comes with a name, an address and is given without the need for coercion. In fact, people have been lining up for it, with hundreds of thousands being tested daily across the US.

Whilst the purpose behind getting the test isn’t primarily about your DNA, but trying rather to identify traces of the Coronavirus in your system, this opportunity will not be lost on those who make their living from our DNA or those who stand to profit from it. The temptation to peek into how DNA is impacting positive and negative tests will be overwhelming.

Legally, where do you stand?

Great question and not an easy one to answer. It depends, to a large degree, on where you live. If it happens to be Iceland, you couldn’t care less. Almost every single individual in Iceland has turned over their DNA voluntarily as part of their Genome project.

It is an admirable undertaking with sound medical goals and a desire to better understand how our genes affect our health and susceptibility to diseases. It also been done with the utmost transparency and the willing engagement of the Icelandic people.

Move across the frozen seas in the direction of America and things change. They change dramatically. There is no transparency, no oversight and a plethora of financially and politically motivated individuals just waiting to screw you over, and in case you didn’t realize, your DNA is ripe for the picking.

You do, in theory, own the right to your DNA in the US. It’s the reason a court order is required to make you hand it over should you be unwilling and the court determines it is in the public interest. There are however a number of huge loopholes in the law. The problem with the current system comes down to the fact that genetic data can have multiple uses beyond its original one.

Say you participate in a research study or clinical trial that generates DNA data. A federal law protecting human subjects, called the US Common Rule, mandates that you be informed of how your data might be shared prior to signing a consent document. In 2016, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which also provides any federal research subjects with a certificate of confidentiality.

This restricts the researchers collecting your genetic data from releasing it to law enforcement or other government agencies. And if that information were to somehow be illegally obtained, through a hack or some other breach, it would be inadmissible in court.

Great, but say you want to add that genetic information to your electronic health record, so it’s available to your doctor. Now it becomes a piece of personal health data, governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Under HIPAA, your genetic data can’t be given to your school or employer, but law enforcement agencies are entitled to access it without a warrant if you’re the victim or suspect of a criminal investigation.

Your insurance provider can also access it. That’s why, in 2008, Congress passed the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, which prevents health insurers from denying coverage or jacking up prices based on someone’s genetic predisposition to various health conditions. (They can still do that if your genes make you actively sick – GINA becomes basically useless once you show symptoms.)

GINA also doesn’t apply to long-term-care insurance, life insurance, or disability insurance, though it does ban employers from using it to decide who gets hired, fired, promoted, or given a raise.

Business and government want your genetic data. They will ensure they get hold of it, one way or another

It is however going to get worse. Much worse, as this recent article from Wired points out.

OF ALL THE provisions of the Affordable Care Act – “Obamacare,” if you’re on a first-name basis – the one that seemed the most uncontroversially humane was the guarantee that insurance companies could not use so-called preexisting conditions to deny coverage. If you had a chronic illness or had recovered from something and lost your insurance, or if you quit or got fired, you could still get onto a plan.

But the odds say that sick people stay sick or get sicker, and insurance companies don’t make a profit by paying out. By voting to repeal the ACA and replace it with … well, with something, not totally clear what, the Republican-led House of Representatives seems to have nuked the preexisting condition guarantee. The new bill, which passed in a close 217–213 vote, allows insurance companies to charge sick people more. According to one nonpartisan analysis, it allocates enough money to cover those higher rates for just 5 percent of people with preexisting conditions.

Think it can’t get worse? The ACA specifically protected against discrimination for preexisting conditions that showed up through genetic tests. You might not be sick yet – in technical terms, the illness has not manifested – but if you, for example, test positive for one of the pathogenic variants (a less X-Manly term than “mutation”) in the BRCA gene that predisposes you to breast cancer, you could still get covered. If the House bill becomes law, that protection vanishes.

The tip of the iceberg

Business and government want your genetic data. They will ensure they get hold of it, one way or another, either in collusion with each other or independently. Their reasons for wanting the data are not to better serve you. Never ever make that mistake.

The information contained in your DNA will be used for social engineering. It is already happening right under our noses. Your DNA will used to “stream” you for careers, health and life insurance premiums, access to services and, depending on the lengths we take it to, possibly even prison, if they ever identify markers associated with criminal behavior.

New biological genetically-based weapons are no doubt already under discussion in the Oval Office. Imagine being able to target a gene unique to a certain population or demographic. It’s a can of worms we can’t close in the hands of individuals we cannot trust and the pandemic has offered them the keys to Aladdin’s cave. We need to ensure they aren’t using them.

So what do we do?

The opportunity to exploit Covid-19 testing clearly exists, but is it happening? There is no hard evidence to confirm it, but sufficient reason to assume it is being done covertly. Under a Trump-led regime that is actively legislating to enable free commercial access to your DNA, why would they intentionally choose to overlook this free goldmine of data?

Can we stop it? Probably not, is the short answer and that of course raises the question of where that leaves you an I? Do we simply accept the inevitability of a society regulated by genes rather than free choice? Or do we raise our hands in united outrage and demand changes? Wholesale changes, to our rights, our freedoms, and our privacy.

A simple legal undertaking by all testing facilities not to perform any tests beyond the scope of the original purpose of a test would be a start. An undertaking to destroy all sample materials provided in a responsible and timely manner and not to share, or allow access to, any of the materials or identifying information provided by the patient. Massive penalties and the prospect of prison would enforce these undertakings.

Were you asked to sign anything when you underwent your Covid-19 test? How long was the document and what information did it require? What was in the fine print and did you read it?

Anyone with access to these testing documents is welcome to email copies or photos of the documents to us. This open invitation extends to the testing laboratories should they wish to actively address the concerns raised above and perhaps highlight how they deal with these issues currently. Submissions can be made anonymously to privacy@medika.life and all submissions will be considered confidential.

You can also reach out to your local government at the state level. Social media in this instance becomes our best friend. Publically highlighting an issue often ensures it is addressed in a transparent and accountable manner and also serves to draw the attention of a noticeably absent media.

The post Is Your Covid Test Being Used to Covertly Harvest Your DNA? appeared first on Medika Life.

Often heralded as one of the most important scientific advances in molecular biology, PCR revolutionized the study of DNA to such an extent that its creator, Kary B. Mullis, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993.

What is PCR used for?

Once amplified, the DNA produced by PCR can be used in many different laboratory procedures. For example, most mapping techniques in the Human Genome Project (HGP) relied on PCR.

PCR is also valuable in a number of laboratory and clinical techniques, including DNA fingerprinting, detection of bacteria or viruses (particularly AIDS), and diagnosis of genetic disorders. This technique has featured prominently in global testing for the novel Corona Virus (SARS-nCoV2).

How does PCR work?

To amplify a segment of DNA using PCR, the sample is first heated so the DNA denatures, or separates into two pieces of single-stranded DNA. Next, an enzyme called “Taq polymerase” synthesizes – builds – two new strands of DNA, using the original strands as templates.

This process results in the duplication of the original DNA, with each of the new molecules containing one old and one new strand of DNA. Then each of these strands can be used to create two new copies, and so on, and so on. The cycle of denaturing and synthesizing new DNA is repeated as many as 30 or 40 times, leading to more than one billion exact copies of the original DNA segment.

The entire cycling process of PCR is automated and can be completed in just a few hours. It is directed by a machine called a thermocycler, which is programmed to alter the temperature of the reaction every few minutes to allow DNA denaturing and synthesis.

PCR’s role in Covid19 testing

The info-graphic below will help you visualize the testing procedures for Covd19. This article will focus only on the PCR testing and not on the identification of antibodies with Serological Testing. PCR will assess if you are infected, whereas the antibodies test checks to see if you were infected.

The Diagnostic or PCR Test

This test uses a sample of mucus typically taken from a person’s nose or throat. The test may also work on saliva — that’s under investigation. It looks for the genetic material of the coronavirus. The test uses PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which greatly amplifies the viral genetic material if it is present. That material is detectable when a person is actively infected.

Generally speaking, in terms of producing a reliable result, these are the best tests. However, a few days may pass before the virus starts replicating in the throat and nose, so the test isn’t guaranteed to identify someone who has recently been infected. Swabs can also sometimes fail to pick up signs of active infection.

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