when Malone was a graduate student in biology in the late 1980s at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he injected genetic material—DNA and RNA—into the cells of mice in hopes of creating a new

 kind of vaccine. 

(说明马龙当时研究的目的就是为了开辟新的疫苗途径，而不是事后诸葛亮）

These two studies do indeed represent seminal work in the field of gene transfer, according to Rein Verbeke, a postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University, in Belgium, and the lead author of a 2019 history of mRNA-vaccine development. 

马龙的研究是开拓性的（发明的另一种说法）