If my little knowledge from biology class serves me correct, RNA uses Udenine instead of Thymine. But in this document it uses T.
Can somebody explain to me why?
Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
51–60 of 389 posts
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#52I'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
> This is somewhat of a problem for our vaccine - it needs to sneak past our immune system. Over many years of experimentation, it was found that if the U in RNA is replaced by a slightly modified molecule, our immune system loses interest. For real.
> So in the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, every U has been replaced by 1-methyl-3’-pseudouridylyl, denoted by Ψ. The really clever bit is that although this replacement Ψ placates (calms) our immune system, it is accepted as a normal U by relevant parts of the cell.
Neat.
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#53Wow Looks like it is analogous to having a header on a TCP packet. [0] Here is an animation of mRNA encoding translated to proteins inside a ribosome. [1] "The ribosome is composed of one large and one small sub unit that assemble around the messenger RNA, which then passes through the ribosome like a computer tape. The amino acid building blocks, that's the small glowing red molecules, are carried into the ribosome…
I ended up majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology in my undergrad because I was browsing on Wikipedia one day and came across an article written on an E. Coli variant that had sentences like:
01J3 e. Coli has a DNA Polymerase that contains 3k’-5’ proofreading capability and 5’-3’ error correcting with a polymerisation rate of 50bps
I’ve made the above up because I have never been able to find a Wikipedia page winxe that as succinctly pointed out to me that biology was a machine and I was hooked
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a breakdown https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... discussed previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538820
> This is somewhat of a problem for our vaccine - it needs to sneak past our immune system. Over many years of experimentation, it was found that if the U in RNA is replaced by a slightly modified molecule, our immune system loses interest. For real. > So in the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, every U has been replaced by 1-methyl-3’-pseudouridylyl, denoted by Ψ. The really clever bit is that although this replacement Ψ pla…
Umm, isn't that kind of scary? Like could you create a virus with this Ψ that our immune system can't fight at all?
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#55The thinking behind attaching a PDF with colors and not a Genbank file is why we can't have nice things in biotechnology.
Wait, you mean you don't extract genomic data from Excel? The MARCH1 gene brings many interesting surprises.
I am fond of September 2, myself.
For those not in the know:
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13...
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#56Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#57What this does, as a non-biotech person, I believe I understand at a high level: plonk this code into a ribosome and out comes the desired protein.
What I don't understand is:
a) how the m-RNA code relates to the produced protein (i.e I can read C-code and get an idea of what is does fairly quickly, but can the same be said of m-RNA and the resulting protein)?
b) how did they get their hands on that code in the first place? Do the coronaviruses use m-RNA as well? Was then a coronavirus somehow "dissected" to get at the spike protein "source code"?Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#58Related: Here's a article from late last year describing and explaining the source code of Pfizer vaccine: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... It's a very interesting read and I hope the author makes another post explaining the differences of the two mrna vaccines.
From that link:
> The injection contains volatile genetic material that describes the famous SARS-CoV-2 ‘Spike’ protein. Through clever chemical means, the vaccine manages to get this genetic material into some of our cells.
> These then dutifully start producing SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins in large enough quantities that our immune system springs into action. Confronted with Spike proteins, and (importantly) tell-tale signs that cells have been taken over, our immune system develops a powerful response against multiple aspects of the Spike protein AND the production process.
What happens to the "volatile genetic material" at the end of this? Does it just linger in the body indefinitely? Or does it somehow get destroyed (and what does that mean)? From my reading of the above excerpt, it's the produced spike proteins that get destroyed but not the original genetic material that's injected. The reason I'm asking is to understand how the vaccine designers determine if there are any long-term effects of having this artificial material inside your body. They couldn't have tested it over a long time frame given how quickly all this moved.
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#59> So how different is the mRNA in the Moderna, BioNTech/Pfizer & CureVac vaccines? There are 1274 codon positions. 808 are identical across all 3 vaccines. 103 are unique to Moderna, 249 unique to BioNTech, 230 to CureVac
https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/1375091898797453326
Re: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]
#60I'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.
It’s like looking at the binary file and saying “that’s pretty simple” while ignoring the massive amount of machinery that allows us to run that file and use it (CPUs, Motherboards, computers, etc).
I presume a whole bunch goes into making vaccine and this is just the top of the iceberg.