A team at the University of California-Riverside is attempting to develop a method to deliver mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, through…salads. Yes, salads.
The National Science Foundation gave botany professor Juan Pablo Giraldo and his team a $500,000 grant to study “whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories,” according to UC-Riverside News. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California-San Diego are joining in the effort. Just another example of going “green,” I guess.
The initiative hopes to eventually show that: “DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate,” in turn “demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot.” At which point, a correct dosage could be determined.
The NSF’s Giraldo told UC-Riverside News, “Ideally, a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person. We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens. Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”
Giraldo added that chloroplasts — “tiny, solar-powered factories that produce sugar and other molecules which allow the plant to grow” — may serve as an “untapped source for making desirable molecules.” And nanotechnologies developed by UC-San Diego professor Nicole Steinmetz may succeed in delivering the requisite genetic material to the chloroplasts.
Steinmetz stated: "Our idea is to repurpose naturally occurring nanoparticles, namely plant viruses, for gene delivery to plants. Some engineering goes into this to make the nanoparticles go to the chloroplasts and also to render them non-infectious toward the plants."
This is all as may be, but given liberals’ belief that it is mostly Trump supporters-- and other toxically masculine idiots and troglodytes-- who refuse to accept the jab, is salad the best possible vehicle for delivering the blessed vaccines to the skeptical? Since so-called progressives tend to think that MAGA people subsist solely on a diet of meat, preferably wild game shot with one of their many guns, this endeavor to turn salad into a vaccine seems off-target, so to speak.
If (those who are so full of) Themselves want to vaccinate the rest of us at any cost, no matter what, they could find better ways to trick us into allowing the unvetted, experimental, protein-spiking foreign substances into our bodies. Like spiking our drinks with the vaccines. Or sneaking it into our beef jerky.
Come to think of it, leftists could just mandate that every 6-pack of beer sold in the United States contain the equivalent of one adult coronavirus vaccination shot.
Vaccine fascists could put it in Kool-Aid, too. After all, à la Jim Jones, they are always trying to get us to drink their Kool-Aid.
I’m sure Dr. Fauci would be down with that.
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