 Alright, the antigen test doesn't test for nucleic acid. It doesn't test for a gene. It doesn't amplify anything. It actually tests for protein. And I'm back yet again to our website with all the crazy information on it because I want to show you the protein that the antigen tests were attempting to detect. It's the N protein. And the N protein is called the nucleoprotein. And it's protein that's wound, that the RNA strand is wound around. Say that fast for fun. And it's here in red. So this is a combination of those N proteins and the RNA. And you can see again, I just think, I don't know, I'm such a nerd, but I love this. Here's the N protein in the virus. Here's the N protein, the RNA code that's saying make this N protein to go with your RNA. Okay, so that protein is what our antigen testing strategy was detecting. Now, it's immune. Okay, and it's protein. And who built the proteins? The genetics built the proteins. The nucleic acid built the protein. So if the virus is in there doing its thing, replicating and making copies of itself, then you're going to end up with the swab that has N protein in it. I'm going to push pause and get a drink of water. I'm out of lecture practice. Okay, so the antigen test is similar to the pregnancy test. It's actually put in paper antibodies that bind to the protein. Now antibodies, we're going to talk about antibodies. Antibodies are proteins coded for by your DNA that are produced by your immune system in response to an invader, a foreign object. So you have antibodies. There are antibodies that bind to foreign proteins like the N protein. How did they figure this out? How cool is this? So they took those antibodies. They tagged some of them with glowing marks. What? And then you run, look, you run your nose juice through the paper. And when the nose juice travels through, if the N protein is there, it will bind to those antibodies. It will keep rolling. Check out in this second line. I need my pen. This is the second line. So this fluid is going to pass in this direction. And the N proteins on the viruses are going to bind to these antibodies. Once the antibodies are picked up, the particles get stuck again on a stationary line of antibodies. The particles are also glowing. They have color to them. So if the N protein is present, then it's going to get stuck on the line with the glowing fluorescence. The N protein, the antibody, and the fluorescence are going to get stuck on the positive line. The control line, remember that line? Where you had to have both lines. If you were the winner, the COVID positive winner, you had to have both lines, because it's a positive control. You have a line that says, hey, I want to make sure the test works. I don't care if this antibody has attached to an N protein or not, but it needs to be able to attach to our antibodies in these lines. And it works. So they've set it up so that you've got that positive control and if the protein is present, it will line up. I think I already said it, but this is the exact same technology used in pregnancy tests. And in pregnancy tests, you're picking up a hormone called HCG that is excreted in urine if there is a small clump of growing cells in a uterus. Okay, that is how the antigen test works. The last thing I want to talk about is vaccines, because, oh, what kind of vaccines did we come up with for SARS-CoV-2?