Showing posts with label article. Show all posts
Showing posts with label article. Show all posts

Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/


  • The CAP to make sure the RNA looks like regular mRNA
  • A known successful and optimized 5' untranslated region (UTR)
  • A codon optimized signal peptide to send the Spike protein to the right place (amino acids copied 100% from the original virus)
  • A codon optimized version of the original spike, with two ‘Proline’ substitutions to make sure the protein appears in the right form
  • A known successful and optimized 3' untranslated region
  • A poly-A tail with a ‘linker’ in there

 



If we look closely, we see that the majority of the changes happen in the third codon position, noted with a ‘3’ above. And if we check the universal codon table, we see that this third position indeed often does not matter for which amino acid is produced.

So, the changes are synonymous, but then why are they there? Looking closely, we see that all changes except one lead to more C and Gs.

So why would you do that? As noted above, our immune system takes a very dim view of ‘exogenous’ RNA, RNA code coming from outside the cell. To evade detection, the ‘U’ in the RNA was already replaced by a Ψ.

However, it turns out that RNA with a higher amount of Gs and Cs is also converted more efficiently into proteins,

And this has been achieved in the vaccine RNA by replacing many characters with Gs and Cs wherever this was possible.



This is one of the exceptionally clever bits about the vaccine. Our body runs a powerful antivirus system (“the original one”). For this reason, cells are extremely unenthusiastic about foreign RNA and try very hard to destroy it before it does anything.

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So in the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, every U has been replaced by 1-methyl-3'-pseudouridylyl, denoted by Ψ.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.



Many people have asked, could viruses also use the Ψ technique to beat our immune systems? In short, this is extremely unlikely. Life simply does not have the machinery to build 1-methyl-3'-pseudouridylyl nucleotides. Viruses rely on the machinery of life to reproduce themselves, and this facility is simply not there. The mRNA vaccines quickly degrade in the human body, and there is no possibility of the Ψ-modified RNA replicating with the Ψ still in there. “No, Really, mRNA Vaccines Are Not Going To Affect Your DNA” is also a good read.


Sunday, 21 August 2022

Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/mouse-heaven-or-mouse-hell



Eventually other deviant behavior emerged. Mice who had been raised improperly or kicked out of the nest early often failed to develop healthy social bonds, and therefore struggled in adulthood with social interactions. Maladjusted females began isolating themselves like hermits in empty apartments - unusual behavior among mice. Maladjusted males, meanwhile, took to grooming all day-preening and licking themselves hour after hour. Calhoun called them "the beautiful ones." And yet, even while obsessing over their appearance, these males had zero interest in courting females, zero interest in sex.

Intriguingly, Calhoun had noticed in earlier utopias that such maladjusted behavior could spread like a contagion from mouse to mouse. He dubbed this phenomenon "the behavioral sink."

Between the lack of sex, which lowered the birth rate, and inability to raise pups properly, which sharply increased infant mortality, the population of Universe 25 began to plummet. By the 21st month, newborn pups rarely survived more than a few days. Soon, new births stopped altogether. Older mice lingered for a while-hiding like hermits or grooming all day-but eventually they died out as well. By spring 1973, less than five years after the experiment started, the population had crashed from 2,200 to 0. Mouse heaven had gone extinct.



Recently, however, human birth rates have dropped sharply in many developed countries-often below replacement levels- and young people in those places have reportedly lost interest in sex. The parallels to Universe 25 seem spooky.

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

Joseph Osmundson - Freedom county

Interesting article about the author’s origins, Arlington WA, how it once wanted to secede and all the differences in the Pacific Northwest.  Intriguing style.

https://therumpus.net/2014/02/notes-from-freedom-county/