| > A modification in the frame of mind of genetic understanding is performed on a viral cell. Let me be frank: this sentence is nonsense technobabble. > A segment of viral genome which encodes part of the body viral is excised and modified. No, this does not happen (even ignoring that I don’t know what “body viral” means). > Indeed if you review my words you'll note that I explicitly address the lack of a defect. And yet you use the term “reconstruct”. — Reconstruct what? > The mRNA vaccines we know today can certainly be viewed as a modification and reconstruction of viral genomic material. This sentence becomes somewhat true if we use “information” instead of “material”. But that has nothing to do with gene therapy (as you seem to acknowledge yourself later!?). > Gene editing or genome editing is […]. Note the distinct concept from gene therapy I hold a PhD in genomics. You do not need to explain basic molecular biology to me. > Even if only from the perspective of how information on Wikipedia can be construed by the layman - such as myself. Then I humbly suggest that your understanding of the subject matter as a layman is — evidently — fragmentary, and insufficient for making up your own definitions and claiming them as being equally valid as those of experts. |
>Let me be frank: this sentence is nonsense technobabble.
>> A segment of viral genome which encodes part of the body viral is excised and modified.
>No, this does not happen (even ignoring that I don’t know what “body viral” means).
"Body viral" is an allusion to terms like "body politic" and the practice of recycling that turn of phrase in other ways. It was intended to sarcastically and self-depreciatingly refer to my misapplication of the word "cell" to virii. I make no claims on the quality of the allusion.
As I understand things: The SARS-CoV-2 genome contains a sequence that expresses a spike protein. To make the mRNA vaccines,that sequence was excised. I assume that the excision was done by genetic sequencing, so it wasn't excised from any particular virion but rather by an excision from the genome, one abstraction further up. Then the sequence is modified to change the protein that is expressed – a form that was taken from the physical construction of a virus – and modified again to allow delivery for replication in human cells.
To do something in a certain frame of mind means to see it from that perspective and to use a particular understanding to do it. I wake up in the morning and kiss my fiancee; I do that in the frame of mind of love, not from the frame of mind of facio-mandibular biomechanics. I sit down at my computer and make it do things, and I do that in the frame of mind of abstraction and symbolic manipulation. Or in the frame of mind of blowing up starbases and killing mans.
In my experience, any discussion between two entities that have an uncertain degree of mutual legibility is bound to become philosophical and fuzzy. I've also long since learned to express myself as I think and as I see. Therefore I stand by my words that a modification in the frame of mind of genetic understanding is performed on a virus.
>> Gene editing or genome editing is […]. Note the distinct concept from gene therapy
> I hold a PhD in genomics.
That's nice.
> You do not need to explain basic molecular biology to me.
Indeed I edited my comment to properly frame my message that this is the information on Wikipedia. Thanks for the quick response though! Please note that nowhere in this discussion is basic molecular biology being explained to you – at least I myself have interacted with the discussion as if it were about the ambiguity that plainly exists in the term "gene therapy" as carried in people's minds, and how that harmful ambiguity might have come about.
>> Even if only from the perspective of how information on Wikipedia can be construed by the layman - such as myself.
> Then I humbly suggest that your understanding of the subject matter as a layman is — evidently — fragmentary, and insufficient for making up your own definitions and claiming them as being equally valid as those of experts.
Nowhere have I claimed any of my words to hold as a definition, and wouldn't do so. This is a discussion in a comment section on Hacker News. Between parties with little known common ground. I'd like to repeat the term "charitable interpretation". Furthermore, I am going to do you the favor of understanding your statement that I am "making up my own definitions and claiming them as being equally valid as those of experts" as a common and minor utterance of insincere hostility rather than it being based in delusion.
Finally, it is my opinion that from the higher education I have received I derive a duty to explain and enlighten, and no rights or entitlements.