Stanford Researchers Hack The mRNA Sequence In Moderna's Vaccine, Post It To Github

Standford researchers have studied leftover Moderna vaccines, discovered the mRNA sequence that powers it, and posted the sequence on Github.

In a story first published by Motherboard yesterday, Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura detailed how they took Moderna vaccine doses set to be thrown away and were able to quasi-reverse-engineer them to discover the sequence that makes them tick.

"We posted the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules that have become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021," they said. "As the vaccine has been rolling out, these sequences have begun to show up in many different investigational and diagnostic studies. Knowing these sequences and having the ability to differentiate them from other RNAs in analyzing future biomedical data sets is of great utility."

This doesn't mean that anyone will be able to make vaccines at home; a highly complicated supply chain of materials to make the vaccine is inaccessible to the average person. However, as vaccine production from big pharmaceutical companies ramps up in America, sharing the knowledge of how the vaccine works could prove a major boon to countries around the world who have had a harder time gaining access to a working vaccine.

"While anyone interested could data-mine and filter these sequences out later, there is a substantial economy of scale and educational value in having the sequences available ASAP and in not having to guess where they have come from," they said.

Fire and Shoura sid that they received FDA approval to post their findings publicly. Moderna did not respond to their requests.

The news spread online as people praised the Stanford researchers' work to aid the public.