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| Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (berthub.eu) | ||
| recommended by 1 user | 2020 | 549 points by ahubert | medicine | original thread | | ||
| One user recommended this thread. What they said: |
| mrep Dec 30, 2020 | on: Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a new… | context |
It is reused many times as this super interesting article that I highly recommend [0] explains and I'll quote:
The very end of mRNA is polyadenylated. This is a fancy way of saying it ends on a lot of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Even mRNA has had enough of 2020 it appears.
mRNA can be reused many times, but as this happens, it also loses some of the A’s at the end. Once the A’s run out, the mRNA is no longer functional and gets discarded. In this way, the ‘poly-A’ tail is protection from degradation.
Studies have been done to find out what the optimal number of A’s at the end is for mRNA vaccines. I read in the open literature that this peaked at 120 or so.
The BNT162b2 vaccine ends with:
UAGCAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAGCAUAU GACUAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA AAAA
This is 30 A’s, then a “10 nucleotide linker” (GCAUAUGACU), followed by another 70 A’s.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538820