Tag: RNA

Pfizer To Supply US With 100 Million More Vaccine Doses

Pfizer and partner BioNTech agreed to supply an additional 100 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine to the U.S., as the country seeks to widen its immunization program and revive its economy. From a report: The agreement brings the total number of doses to be delivered to the U.S. to 200 million, the companies said Wednesday in a statement. The drugmaker…

FDA Panel Endorses Moderna’s Coronavirus Vaccine

Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted easily and quickly to recommend that the agency give emergency use authorization to Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine. CNN reports: The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted 20-0 with one abstention to recommend EUA for the Moderna vaccine, which is very similar in design, composition, safety and efficacy to Pfizer/BioNTech’s…

Celebrating the Path-Breaking Research That Lead to Coronavirus Vaccines

The Washington Post tells the remarkable story of how both Moderna’s vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine relied on a specially designed spike protein partially created by America’s Vaccine Research Center — along with messenger RNA, “a technology never before harnessed in an approved vaccine.” And also decades of path-breaking research: If, as expected in the next few weeks, regulators give those…

‘I Should Have Loved Biology’

James Somers, in a long essay: I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names: the Golgi apparatus and the Krebs cycle; mitosis, meiosis; DNA, RNA, mRNA, tRNA. In the textbooks, astonishing facts were presented without astonishment. Someone probably told me that every cell in my body has the same DNA. But no one…

Tiny Variants In Genes May Dictate Severity of Coronavirus

Scientists are tracking small differences in DNA to explain why the disease has different effects. An anonymous reader shares a report from The Guardian: Key developments include research which indicates that interferon — a molecular messenger that stimulates immune defenses against invading viruses — may play a vital role in defending the body. Scientists have found that rare mutations in some…

A protocol to minimize the thermodynamic cost of erasing a single bit over a given amount of time

Stochastic thermodynamics theory is a framework that delineates the amount of heat, dynamics and entropy in small (i.e., mesoscopic) systems that are far from a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. In recent years, scientists have tried to use this theory to better understand the dynamics underlying a variety of systems, including colloidal particles, DNA, RNA, enzymes, molecular motors and electronic devices. …

Covid-19: Asymptomatic people may be more infectious than we thought

People infected with covid-19 but who show no symptoms appear to have similar levels of viral RNA in their noses and throats to those with mild symptoms Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2255028-covid-19-asymptomatic-people-may-be-more-infectious-than-we-thought/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

First Covid-19 Reinfection Has Been Documented

phalse phace writes: Researchers in Hong Kong on Monday reported what appears to be the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection, a 33-year-old man who was first infected by SARS-CoV-2 in late March and then, four and a half months later, seemingly contracted the virus again while traveling in Europe. The case raises questions about the durability of immune protection from…