Reprogramming our Cells: Turning Back the Molecular Clock

We are starting a series regarding the covid-19 mRNA vaccine. In this episode we are going to be covering the brief history of vaccination. Before vaccines were developed, people used various methods to protect themselves and their children from different bacterial and viral infections! These early observations laid the foundation for sophisticated vaccines a few hundred years later. Check out our website for more details and the sources we used. https://notjustrna.wixsite.com/notjustrna

In 2006 when Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and Dr. Kazutoshi Takahashi at the Kyoto University in Japan, asked if they could create stem cells from ordinary skin cells. They discovered four genes when turned on in skin cells reverts it back to a stem cell-like state. Today we will the scientific exploration that lead to this discovery, why this is critical to human health and the ethical implications of creating stems cells in a laboratory. Check out our website for the sources we used, and additional information: https://notjustrna.wixsite.com/notjustrna Let us now if you have any questions about this episode, and if you're interested and want more details in topics we covered.

What role does RNA play during embryogenesis, puberty and death? These are some of the questions we will answer during today's episode. Keep in mind that many of these subjects have been studied for decades so we are just going to be surfing the waves of a deep ocean of research. And we will be mostly focused on the life of mammals, but many of these processes are highly conserved, meaning they are the same in many forms of life from plants to insects to us.

Let's explore one of the changes that RNA undergoes during this voyage. We have likened DNA to scripts, being read into RNA acting both as messages as well as the messengers of the information, finally ending up in the creation of proteins. But imagine if RNA gets a little playful and edits the message from DNA a little, all for a greater purpose, of course!

Herman Branson was a trained physicist who used mathematical and chemical properties of proteins to determine protein structure, for which he received little credit. After 20 years of trailblazing research, in 1970 Branson became President of Lincoln University in Ohio where he worked until he retired. Throughout his life Branson advocated for higher education and became the founder of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. For more details on Dr. Herman Branson, his work and other related resources check out our website: https://notjustrna.wixsite.com/notjustrna  

Women who have contributed to the advancement of science are often overlooked by history! In today’s episode we are going to highlight the lifetime achievements of one such forgotten hero: Marie M. Daly. During the mid-1900s Daly became the first Black Woman in history to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry! Daly spent life making tremendous strides in everything from characterizing the structure, organization, and expression of DNA, understanding the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and characterizing the effect of smoking on the heart and lungs. In short, Daly fought racial and gender biases to dedicate her life to advancing human health.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic we have been hearing so much about RNA. We have RNA-based vaccines for the first time in history. Which scientists predict to be much more effective than many previously developed vaccines, so there is a good chance that future vaccines might be RNA-based as well. But what is RNA? There is a lot of misinformation floating around, our goal is to help create a community where people can learn about RNA, and openly discuss questions questions.