Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by kart23 on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:39PM (#26628524)

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?

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by iso1337 on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:47PM (#26628629)

It's the 3' (3-prime) UTR (un-translated region). It can affect the translation of the mRNA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_prime_untranslated_regio....

The next thing is the poly-A tail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyadenylation

blasting the 3' UTR, we see it ~50% of it was copied from the human mitochondria

tldr, extra regulatory signals (often not well understood)

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by dnautics on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:58PM (#26628765)

Doesn't really make sense for it to copy from the mitochondrion; I presume this thing gets expressed in the cytosol.

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by fabian2k on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:54PM (#26628725)

The 3' and 5' untranslated regions are the parts of the mRNA directly before and after the part that encodes the actual protein. So they are themselves not translated into amino acids.

What they actually do can vary, but essentially they can provide places for other things to bind and influence what happens with the mRNA. There are some fancier cases like riboswitches, but you don't see those in humans. The stuff at the start and end of the mRNA also determines stability of the mRNA.

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by flobosg on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:57PM (#26628757)

In the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA, the 3' (or the latter) half of the 3'-UTR comes from human mitochondrial 12S rRNA.

The Moderna one has the 3'-UTR of the alpha subunit of human hemoglobin.

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by hfjfktmtkrn on Monday March 29, 2021 @06:08PM (#26628891)

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.

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by Asparagirl on Monday March 29, 2021 @06:12PM (#26628935)

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

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by hfjfktmtkrn on Monday March 29, 2021 @06:18PM (#26628994)

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

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by layoutIfNeeded on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:45PM (#26628605)

That’s the copyright notice.

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Re:Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf] by _theory_ on Monday March 29, 2021 @06:36PM (#26629154)

That's the part that makes you randomly yell, "Hail Bill Gates!"

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