Recoding by N1-methylpseudouridine guides rational mRNA vaccine design
Panagiotis Poulis, Giovanni Robecchi, Arina O. Kurochkina, Michele Felletti, Marina V. Rodnina · 2026
Read Recoding by N1-methylpseudouridine guides rational mRNA vaccine design by Panagiotis Poulis, Giovanni Robecchi, Arina O. Kurochkina, Michele Felletti, Marina V. Rodnina (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13620113.txt.
Description
Panagiotis Poulis and four colleagues investigated a side effect of the chemical tweak that made COVID-19 mRNA vaccines practical. The modified building block, called m1Psi in the study, calms immune alarms and stabilizes the message. Earlier work hinted it can also make ribosomes slip and read the message in the wrong frame. The team measured that slipping with glowing reporter genes in cells, a rebuilt translation system, and single-molecule microscopy.
Slipping rose on one short sequence pattern where the reading machinery paused. At that pause the modified block weakened the grip between message and transfer RNA and nudged the transfer RNA into a slip-prone shape. Swapping the pattern for two nearby alternatives erased the effect entirely. The authors say vaccine designers can keep the useful modification while simply avoiding the risky sequence when they optimize the code.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Panagiotis Poulis, Giovanni Robecchi, Arina O. Kurochkina, Michele Felletti, Marina V. Rodnina |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 55 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |