3 ms·
The other two have lots of fancy things done to the mRNA itself, including pseudouridine substitutions, 3 and 5 prime untranslated regions, and a poly-a tail. T
by Vecr 5y ago
The other two have lots of fancy things done to the mRNA itself, including pseudouridine substitutions, 3 and 5 prime untranslated regions, and a poly-a tail. The payload comes from the NIH, and is modified by them as well with proline insertions to stabilize the spike in the prefusion form. All current EUA vaccines in the US (BioNTech, Moderna, Jansen), plus NovaVax (code not delivered to the user in that case) use some form of the NIH payload, as far as I can tell.
Edit: I forgot about the proprietary mRNA delivery systems as well, I don't really know much about those.
- rich_sasha 5y agoInteresting list, thanks! Do you know of any popular science description of these? I did biology at middle school and not since (but I continue to find the mechanics of low-level biology fascinating).
- vacooom 5y agoI found this being a very good explanation for the technically inclined: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
- tobessebot 5y agoShould be a good start. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/part-2-reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/part-2-reverse-engineering... https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/curevac-vaccine-and-wonders-of-biology/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/curevac-vaccine-and-wonder... https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/genetic-code-of-covid-19-vaccines/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/genetic-code-of-covid-19-v...
- spuz 5y agoThanks, these are really good reads.
- raphlinus 5y agoAnother good and accessible discussion of what went wrong with this vax is Derek Lowe's "In the Pipeline" blog: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/17/curevac-comes-up-short https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/17/cu...