A Portrait of the Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine

Artist and biologist David Goodsell has done a painting of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine.

The vaccine structure is highly idealized, with spike mRNA in magenta, lipids in blue, and PEG-lipid in green. The background is blood serum or lymph.

Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Moderna Covid-19 vaccines are based on mRNA — you can brush up on how they work at Stat or the CDC.

mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein — or even just a piece of a protein — that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.

See also Goodsell’s painting of a SARS coronavirus from back in February.

• art
• Covid-19
• David Goodsell
• science
• vaccines