Rumor has it that RNA has fallen out of favor politically, presumably as a key molecule for vaccines against Covid, making it an unwelcome symbol to the U.S. administration in the era of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump. According to reports, U.S. researchers have been advised to specifically remove references to messenger RNA from research projects competing for public funding.

We sincerely hope this is just a bad misunderstanding, because, as Eric Topol wrote, RNA is at the heart of “the most important advances in biotechnology of our time, already being used to successfully treat refractory cancers, enable genome editing, develop vaccines for infectious diseases for which there are none, treat autoimmune diseases, and more.”

There are currently no known statements on this latest news from Katalin Karikó, mRNA vaccines pioneer and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with Drew Weissman. As we wait to breathe a sigh of relief, hoping that no one would be reckless enough to penalize an entire class of molecules that underpins life itself, let us take some satisfaction in admiring, with our own eyes, messenger RNAs in action inside living cells.

The video above comes with a recent paper by Jennifer Doudna‘s group and is based on CRISPR imaging — an application of CRISPR that enables targeted imaging of molecules of interest. Simply disable the genetic scissors, equip them with a kind of highlighter, and take advantage of their ability to be programmed to bind to specific targets.

Here they are, then: messenger RNAs, swarming with life. The wow effect is guaranteed, but it’s clear that these kinds of images have practical utility for researchers, especially in understanding the spatial and temporal distribution of RNAs in vivo, within the cytoplasm. This knowledge is crucial for unraveling how the molecular processes that keep cells functioning work — the same processes that, when disrupted, can cause developmental abnormalities and degenerative diseases.