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Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

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Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#41
post #2

What are the purple and blue sections after the stop codon for? I read a little about the 3' region, but for the vaccine, are these sections taken from a particular natural human sequence, or specially engineered for something else?

Among other things that purple region determines the "priority"/"intensity" of the whole sequence. You want it as high as possible to make as much spike protein as possible. It's proprietary information, mostly they try various possibilities until they find one with high expression.

So it’s the mRNA version of !important in CSS?

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#43

I’m a little confused by the title? Looking at the document, it seems to me (knowing next to nothing about this field) it includes both Pfizer and Moderna’s protein spike sequence in figures 1 and 2, respectively. Is that correct? It’s also interesting the way it’s worded: that the sequence was “assembled from $vaccine”. Does that mean whoever published this has backed into these sequences rather than having gathered…

You are correct. The researchers here sequenced each vaccine starting with the bit of vaccine left in the vial after administration. The goal was to get a raw sequence of the Moderna mRNA component so it can be easily filtered out as being a signal of therapeutic origin. Pfizer's sequence has already been published; it's incldued here to confirm that the result achieved experimentally matches the published sequence.

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#45
post #31

I'm sure it's more complex than I grasp as a layperson, but I'm utterly amazed at how simple this _appears_. I get the feeling that this is something I have a better chance of understanding than the average SaaS Terms and Conditions. I expected to have to scroll through pages upon pages of indecipherable text. Instead it's no bigger than a large paragraph of text, and I can easily fit it on my screen.

It really is that “simple.”

Getting it designed and building it is more difficult.

At its core, it’s a piece of mRNA that creates a protein. That code gets transcribed into a protein (often those are relatively short). That protein then triggers your bodies immune response, which trains it to attack covid19.

Inject this mRNA into a cell and it’ll create the protein. Anything can be injected at this point once the mechanism for injection is developed

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#47
post #31

I'm sure it's more complex than I grasp as a layperson, but I'm utterly amazed at how simple this _appears_. I get the feeling that this is something I have a better chance of understanding than the average SaaS Terms and Conditions. I expected to have to scroll through pages upon pages of indecipherable text. Instead it's no bigger than a large paragraph of text, and I can easily fit it on my screen.

It's not really that simple.

Only two companies in the world succeeded, the French company Sanofi which also tried making a mRNA vaccine failed.

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#48
post #31

I'm sure it's more complex than I grasp as a layperson, but I'm utterly amazed at how simple this _appears_. I get the feeling that this is something I have a better chance of understanding than the average SaaS Terms and Conditions. I expected to have to scroll through pages upon pages of indecipherable text. Instead it's no bigger than a large paragraph of text, and I can easily fit it on my screen.

Here is a breakdown https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... discussed previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538820

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things that purple region determines the "priority"/"intensity" of the whole sequence. You want it as high as possible to make as much spike protein as possible. It's proprietary information, mostly they try various possibilities until they find one with high expression.

So it’s the mRNA version of !important in CSS?

More like font-weight, since !important is binary and this is more of a gradient.

Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

#50
post #14

'A group of Stanford researchers has hacked Moderna’s messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine for the novel coronavirus, Motherboard first reported on Monday, and published its entire genetic sequence on the open-source code repository Github.' https://gizmodo.com/stanford-scientists-post-entire-mrna-seq...

What does "hacked" mean here? The article makes it sound like this wasn't something illegal: > Fire and Shoura told Motherboard that they had received permission from the FDA to collect scraps of vaccines that wouldn’t have otherwise been used from empty vials and that they’d notified Moderna in advance of their plans to publish the sequence without receiving any objection in turn. Also: > The research team told Moth…

> Is it simply that they took a sample of the vaccine and studied its composition using some standard machine/process?

That’s exactly what they did.

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