“I worked every night writing the proposals. And the answers always came: ‘no, no, no’. I managed to go somewhere else, work with something else. I also thought: ‘maybe I’m not smart enough,” said Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó in one of her rare interviews in late 2020.

At that time, Karikó was at the top of the world: messenger RNA vaccines (mRNA), which only came true thanks to her work, began to reach the arms of hundreds of millions of people. But the scientist had not forgotten what happened to get there. I couldn’t even forget.

Born in Hungary, the daughter of a butcher, Karikó grew up in a two-room house without a fridge, TV or running water. She was doing well at school, entered college and graduated from the University of Szeged, in the south of the country. He went to work at the city’s Biochemistry Institute until, in 1985, the government cut the laboratory’s funds.

Karikó sold the family car (something forbidden in the country, communist), hid the money inside a teddy bear and took him, along with her husband and daughter, on a trip to the United States – where the family emigrated in search of opportunities.

This new life started well: she did postdoctoral studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, and in 1989 she became an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. But a few years later, the dream had become a nightmare. Nobody believed that studies with messenger RNA, in which Karikó put all his effort, could get somewhere.

Nothing against the idea itself, which was great. When your body needs to make some protein, it consults sets of instructions present in DNA: genes. There, in a process called transcription, the organism manufactures messenger RNA molecules, which contain copies of certain stretches of DNA. They end up in the ribosomes, inside the cells, that read that code and make the proteins. Ready.

It is as if your body is a computer, and mRNA is the software that runs on it. This mechanism is powerful and universal: plants, bacteria and viruses also engage messenger RNA. If you were able to create and edit mRNA in the laboratory, you could use it to teach the human body to make almost any protein – like antibodies against viruses, or molecules capable of preventing and curing disease. “You turn your body into a drug producer,” says Wesley Fotoran, who is an immunologist at the Butantan Institute and researches, in his postdoctoral studies, the use of mRNA against malaria and cancer.

Source: Far beyond vaccines: the promises of mRNA – Mágica Mistura を

Hat, swimwear, toothbrush, two radio needles (the chemical element). This was more or less how Marie Curie’s suitcase was organized when she left Paris in June 1926. The destination: Rio de Janeiro. The invitation came from the Embassy of Brazil in France, but it was the French government that paid for the trip.

At the age of 59 and awarded two Nobel Prizes (Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911), Curie did not seem very excited about the trip. In almost all photos in Brazil she appears sitting and with no interest in looking at the camera. The French naturalized Polish had only one clear objective: to publicize her research on radioactivity.

Source: Visiting Brazil, Marie Curie inspired the beginning of radiotherapy in the country – Mágica Mistura を

Bonjour Printemps | Hello Spring Voir et télécharger les 10 fonds d’écran Bonjour Printemps / See and download the 10 Hello Spring wallpapers.   wallpapers et fonds écran hello printemps spring. 27 more words

10 Hello Printemps | Spring — VOYAGE ONIRIQUE

Tournoi des six nations : Le XV de France vainqueur du Grand Chelem 2022   Rugby : la France bat l’Angleterre et réalise le Grand Chelem   En s’imposant (25-13) contre l’Angleterre, le XV de France de Fabien Galthié a terminé le Tournoi invaincu pour décrocher un Grand Chelem après lequel les Bleus couraient depuis 2010. …

Rugby : Le XV de France Vainqueur du Grand Chelem 2022 — VOYAGE ONIRIQUE

Source: The True Glamour of Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker