Are There Hidden Genes in DNA/RNA Vaccines?

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61988987%3A17310%2F22%3AA2302EBC" target="_blank" >RIV/61988987:17310/22:A2302EBC - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.801915/full" target="_blank" >https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.801915/full</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.801915" target="_blank" >10.3389/fimmu.2022.801915</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Are There Hidden Genes in DNA/RNA Vaccines?

Original language description

Due to the fast global spreading of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus – 2 (SARS-CoV-2), prevention and treatment options are direly needed in order to control infection-related morbidity, mortality, and economic losses. Although drug and inactivated and attenuated virus vaccine development can require significant amounts of time and resources, DNA and RNA vaccines offer a quick, simple, and cheap treatment alternative, even when produced on a large scale. The spike protein, which has been shown as the most antigenic SARS-CoV-2 protein, has been widely selected as the target of choice for DNA/RNA vaccines. Vaccination campaigns have reported high vaccination rates and protection, but numerous unintended effects, ranging from muscle pain to death, have led to concerns about the safety of RNA/DNA vaccines. In parallel to these studies, several open reading frames (ORFs) have been found to be overlapping SARS-CoV-2 accessory genes, two of which, ORF2b and ORF-Sh, overlap the spike protein sequence. Thus, the presence of these, and potentially other ORFs on SARS-CoV-2 DNA/RNA vaccines, could lead to the translation of undesired proteins during vaccination. Herein, we discuss the translation of overlapping genes in connection with DNA/RNA vaccines. Two mRNA vaccine spike protein sequences, which have been made publicly-available, were compared to the wild-type sequence in order to uncover possible differences in putative overlapping ORFs. Notably, the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine sequence is predicted to contain no frameshifted ORFs on the positive sense strand, which highlights the utility of codon optimization in DNA/RNA vaccine design to remove undesired overlapping ORFs. Since little information is available on ORF2b or ORF-Sh, we use structural bioinformatics techniques to investigate the structure-function relationship of these proteins.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10607 - Virology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Frontiers in Immunology

ISSN

1664-3224

e-ISSN

1664-3224

Volume of the periodical

—

Issue of the periodical within the volume

February

Country of publishing house

CH - SWITZERLAND

Number of pages

8

Pages from-to

1-8

UT code for WoS article

000760480300001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85125172408