developing vaccines is usually a very
lengthy process taking on average eight
years to get approved since a few years
we have the ability to create mrna
vaccines which can be developed much
faster so how do these vaccines work are
they safe and how do they compare to
traditional ones but first you must
understand how the immune system works
when a virus enters your body it will
attach itself to one of your cells and
inject its dna or rna into it this is
like a blueprint for your cells
containing instructions on what the cell
has to make so in this case the viruses
rna will tell your cell to make more
copies of the same virus
they become factories assembling new
copies of the virus that can infect even
more cells but don't worry our bodies
have a defense system for foreign
intruders the immune system attacks any
protein virus or bacteria that does not
belong in our bodies but it takes a few
days for it to learn how to attack the
intruder meanwhile the virus factories
are running non-stop quickly replicating
the virus and spreading it in your body
in other words you start experiencing
symptoms of whatever has infected you
after a few days however your immune
system will have figured out how to
attack the virus and will start
producing antibodies these attach
themselves to the virus preventing them
from infecting more cells and marking
them for destruction
as you can see the immune system is
remarkable but it's slow to mount an
attack that is the reason why we can get
sick in the first place so to give it a
helping hand we developed vaccines the
main idea is to train your immune system
to recognize and fight off an infection
before it has occurred almost like
showing your immune system a mug shot of
the virus and saying if you see this
kill it
there are various types of vaccines but
let's take a look at the new kit on the
block mrna vaccines to understand how
they work let's take the covit 19
pandemic as an example you might have
seen pictures of the virus with its
distinctive spikes these spikes allow
the virus to attach to specific cells in
your body and infect them now here's the
key idea for the covet 19 vaccine what
if we could train our immune system to
recognize these spikes by having our own
bodies produce them to do that
researchers took the virus's blueprint
its rna and isolated the part
responsible for producing the spikes
armed with this blueprint they created
mrna or messenger rna this is a special
form of rna that can enter your cells
and give them instructions in this case
the rna contains instructions to build
the spikes of the coronavirus not the
virus itself just the spikes so mrna
vaccines contain instructions for your
cells that tell them to build a part of
a virus in large volumes almost like
giving them a recipe to follow once this
is happening your immune system kicks
into action and starts learning how to
attack these intruders again it takes
some time for the immune system to fight
off these spikes but you won't get sick
because it's only the spikes not the
virus itself
and that's it your immune system has
learned how to attack the spikes of the
coronavirus it destroys all the spikes
and even breaks down the mrna vaccine
itself the only thing left in your body
are special b-cells or memory cells
these can linger around for months or
years until the same virus infects you
again when that happens the b cells can
produce the correct antibodies right
away preventing the virus from spreading
and making you sick what's interesting
about this mrna technique is that it's
relatively quick to develop a vaccine as
soon as we know the dna or rna sequence
of a virus and secondly because the
vaccine only makes our bodies produce a
tiny part of a virus we cannot get sick
from it more traditional vaccines use
weakened versions of the actual virus
this also triggers an immune response
but could also give you mild symptoms
now you know how mrna vaccines work but
don't take my word for it all sources
used to make this video are listed in
the description below check it out if
you want a more in-depth explanation
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