WHAT IS A RECOMBINANT VACCINE AND IS IT REALLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER AVAILABLE VACCINE TYPES?
For generations, we classified vaccines as either “killed” or “modified live” (see above). With the advent of genetic engineering, there are now new vaccines that do not fit this classification: the “recombinant vaccines.” The USDA classifies recombinant vaccines into four groups: Category I: Subunit Vaccines Remember that the immune system is stimulated by the shape of a foreign proteins. (One’s body knows what protein shapes are natural to its own cells and will attack most other shapes. Unfortunately, some organisms, such the AIDS virus and the feline leukemia virus, have protein shapes which actually turn the host immune system off!) When it comes to designing a vaccine against an organism, one thought is that it is not efficient to use the entire “dead body” of the organism to stimulate the immune system. The idea here is that it would be more efficient to use only the protein shapes that are stimulatory to the immune system. Shapes that might be detrimental could be omitted as co
For generations, we classified vaccines as either “killed” or “modified live” (see above). With the advent of genetic engineering, there are now new vaccines that do not fit this classification: the recombinant vaccines. The USDA classifies recombinant vaccines into four groups: Category I: Subunit Vaccines Remember that the immune system is stimulated by the shape of a foreign protein. (Your body knows what protein shapes are natural to its own cells and will attack most other shapes. Unfortunately, some organisms, such the AIDS virus and the feline leukemia virus, have protein shapes that actually turn the host immune system off!) When it comes to designing a vaccine against an organism, one thought is that it is not efficient to use the entire “dead body” of the organism to stimulate the immune system. The idea here is that it would be more efficient to use only the protein shapes that are stimulatory to the immune system. Shapes that might be detrimental could be omitted as could b
