Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a new era for vaccinology

Re:Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a n... by mrep on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @09:10AM (#25581794)

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

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Re:Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a n... by m3kw9 on Friday January 01, 2021 @02:10PM (#25605782)

I thought it gets broken down after one use? A related question: How does the mrna move itself back into the copy machinery?

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Re:Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a n... by jcims on Friday January 01, 2021 @04:03PM (#25607089)

It tends to 'degrade' from the end, which is why all of the additional 'A' nucleotides are tacked on to the end, it's basically a NOOP sled that gets shorter and shorter until the instance is disabled.

The mRNA isn't intended to be copied in the body. Once the dose is used up there should be no more spike proteins created.

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Re:Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a n... by jcims on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @10:39AM (#25582561)

Damn, I bookmarked that article to read later. I should have read it before posting...it answered basically all of my questions lol

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Re:Messengers of hope: two mRNA Covid-19 vaccines herald a n... by mensetmanusman on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @09:45AM (#25582089)

I love the image of the mRNA yelling AAAAAAAAAAA throughout the body warning of the virus that is about to come (and then slowly losing energy and dissolving into nothing as all screams do).

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