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Ebola Nose Spray Vaccine Protects Monkeys
First time accepted submitter GeekyKhan writes A new needle-free vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at stopping the transmission of Ebola in monkeys, and it could spell a breakthrough in the battle against the disease. The vaccine is administered through a nasal spray using a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry Ebola DNA. From NBC: "The vaccine uses a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry a tiny piece of Ebola DNA. Sprayed up the nose, it saved all nine monkeys tested for infection. But now the research is dead in the water without funding, Maria Croyle of the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy said. 'Now we are at the crossroads, trying to figure out where to get the funding and resources to continue,' Croyle told NBC News."
With the republicans in charge, you won't be the only scientific group that doesn't have any funding! You'll have lots of company.
Hillarious... but seriously... There is no difference between republicans and democrats:
http://www.scientificamerican....
So stop pretending there is.
Science doesn't care what sounds scary to you.
I have no understanding of the dangers, or lack thereof, of viral payloads
Indeed. You see, biological information is partitioned into units called "genes," which are responsible for individual functions. A "viral payload" consists of the entire viral genome, usually containing at least several thousand genes. Here, just one (or perhaps a few) viral genes have been selected because they code for proteins which the immune system can use to identify infected cells.
There is no danger in making a weakened cold virus (you simply invented the connection to bacteria) which contains these ebola-infected-cell-identifying genes. None of the genes which make ebola dangerous are present. The modified cold virus trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola. If ebola itself shows up later on, the vaccinated immune system is already prepared to identify and kill infected cells.
.: Semper Absurda
The vaccine vector is an Adenovirus, a DNA virus. The recombinant Ebola virus gene it carries will be in the form of DNA, designed to encode the same protein as the original RNA gene in the Ebola virus. It's the protein that is important, since this what the immune system will raise its response against.