Bert Hubert spiega sul suo blog come funziona il vaccino di BioNTech/Pfizer, analizzando in dettaglio le varie componenti dell’mRNA usato per insegnare al nostro sistema immunitario come combattere il virus SARS-CoV-2:

With this, we now know the exact mRNA contents of the BNT162b2 vaccine, and for most parts we understand why they are there:
– 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 (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 slightly mysterious poly-A tail with an unexplained ‘linker’ in there