{"id":31145,"date":"2020-12-29T16:57:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T21:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31145"},"modified":"2020-12-29T16:58:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T21:58:54","slug":"reverse-engineering-the-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-sars-cov-2-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/29\/reverse-engineering-the-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-sars-cov-2-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech\/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/berthub.eu\/articles\/posts\/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine\/\">Bert Hubert<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PowerDNS_Bert\/status\/1342568484946010116\">tweet<\/a>, via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/macguru17\/status\/1343152729766686720\">Max Seelemann<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/berthub.eu\/articles\/posts\/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine\/\"><p>The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine has this digital code at its heart. It is 4284 characters long, so it would fit in a bunch of tweets. At the very beginning of the vaccine production process, someone uploaded this code to a DNA printer (yes), which then converted the bytes on disk to actual DNA molecules.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Our body runs a powerful antivirus system (&ldquo;the original one&rdquo;). For this reason, cells are extremely unenthusiastic about foreign RNA and try very hard to destroy it before it does anything.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>So in the BioNTech\/Pfizer vaccine, every U has been replaced by 1-methyl-3&rsquo;-pseudouridylyl, denoted by &#x3A8;. The really clever bit is that although this replacement &#x3A8; placates (calms) our immune system, it is accepted as a normal U by relevant parts of the cell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bert Hubert (tweet, via Max Seelemann): The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine has this digital code at its heart. It is 4284 characters long, so it would fit in a bunch of tweets. At the very beginning of the vaccine production process, someone uploaded this code to a DNA printer (yes), which then converted the bytes on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-12-29T21:57:29Z","apple_news_api_id":"ff2b1f28-772b-4bf3-8b5c-b7d8b33f7de5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-12-29T21:58:57Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A_ysfKHcrS_OLXLfYsz995Q","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1931,504,460],"class_list":["post-31145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-category","tag-covid-19","tag-malware","tag-science"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31146,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31145\/revisions\/31146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}