New discovery shows human cells can write RNA sequences into DNA

Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA.

Pomerantz's team started by investigating one very unusual polymerase, called polymerase theta. Of the 14 DNA polymerases in mammalian cells, only three do the bulk of the work of duplicating the entire genome to prepare for cell division. The remaining 11 are mostly involved in detecting and making repairs when there's a break or error in the DNA strands. Polymerase theta repairs DNA, but is very error-prone and makes many errors or mutations. The researchers therefore noticed that some of polymerase theta's "bad" qualities were ones it shared with another cellular machine, albeit one more common in viruses—the reverse transcriptase. Like Pol theta, HIV reverse transcriptase acts as a DNA polymerase, but can also bind RNA and read RNA back into a DNA strand.

[T]he researchers tested polymerase theta against the reverse transcriptase from HIV, which is one of the best studied of its kind. They showed that polymerase theta was capable of converting RNA messages into DNA, which it did as well as HIV reverse transcriptase, and that it actually did a better job than when duplicating DNA to DNA. Polymerase theta was more efficient and introduced fewer errors when using an RNA template to write new DNA messages, than when duplicating DNA into DNA, suggesting that this function could be its primary purpose in the cell.

Questions:

How often does it occur?
Are the vaccines in anyway like the polymerase that was studied?
How would we test to see if this is happening with the vaccines?
Can it be done in a lab?
Can we take samples from some of the vaccinated?
Can we take samples from some of the Long haulers
If the vaccine is reverse transcripted, is the virus also reverse transcripted>
The virus generates more rna and spike proteins, so wouldn't the DNA changes be expected to be higher with the virus than the vaccine?
I read somewhere that the virus changes DNA expression. Does it change the DNA or just elicit a response?
Can we use this technology to introduce Williams-Beuren syndrome into unfriendly and hateful people?

"Can we use this technology to introduce Williams-Beuren syndrome into unfriendly and hateful people?"

The more I think about this, it has real possibilities.

You could release a gender specific virus that made women more loyal and friendly. This could dramatically decrease the divorce rate. Improve the nation's growth rate without the need for immigration.
Stepford wives without the chip implants. An organic version. Everyone says organic is better.
Or you could use a race specific virus in bio-warfare. Instead of a virus that causes a pandemic and economic devastation, you could make China a lot more friendly, less aggressive and more willing to please their neighbors.
You could use one that couldn't replicate very many times to clean up cities with high crime and bad attitudes.
Maybe even be able to empty prisons.
Use it to cure depressions. If people are focused on pleasing others, then they won't have time to be depressed.
If the geneticists of Botany Bay had just thought to include Williams-Beuren syndrome into their super humans, there would have been no need for exile. Sure we would lose the basis for the best star trek movies. But the episodes with Harry Mudd would be more interesting.

/mad evil genius mode off.

I’m not entirely sure what your first question is because there’s a lot of words in there, but not a really clear question. What I gather is you’re asking why people are willing to recommend a vaccine that only has ~18 months of studies done on it (and it’s more like 15 so far). The reason is that the studies done thus far have given no indication of leading into problem areas and it’s vanishingly rare to see side effects more than a few weeks after a medicine is given. The mRNA platform has been in progress for decades. It’s just now finally gotten cheap enough to be financially viable at large scale. There’s solid understanding of the mechanisms involved and once the antigen is produced and picked up by dendritic cells, the rest of the process is exactly the same whether it’s an mRNA vaccine, another type of vaccine, or a natural infection. The dendritic cells take the antigens to the lymph nodes and begin the process of T-cell lymphocyte training. Those in turn locate and activate matching B-cell lymphocytes. This all happens exactly the same way regardless of how the antigen came to the dendritic cell, so the only new piece here is how the antigen is being produced. Since ribosomes only have one job (producing proteins from mRNA), that’s well understood for decades as well.

This isn’t some whole new magical thing somebody just invented in their garage last Thursday. This is taking lots of very well known and well understood processes and linking them together in a specific way to produce the desired result. The number of unknowns are not actually that great.

And to be clear, I’m not telling you to get vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines or any other vaccine. I would suggest you take the time to understand the benefits to you and others and to understand any risks (particularly as they relate to allergic reaction if you have a history there or blood clots if you’re a woman of childbearing age for J&J), and then make an informed decision. If you choose to wait, or to wait for another specific vaccine that meets your own person criteria, or you want to wait for 2 years or 3 years of 5 years of study data, or you choose to never get vaccinated, that’s up to you.

I just want you to make that decision having all the information available to you and I want to make sure you aren’t basing it on misinformation and fearmongering spread by people with an agenda. But whether to take one of the vaccines or not? Totally up to you.

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