--- title: "Scientists Post Recipe for Moderna’s COVID Vaccine for Free Online" description: "Scientists posted the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine sequences online to download. Find out how they reverse engineered the code." date: "2021-03-29" modified: "2021-04-07" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-post-moderna-covid-vaccine-free-online" categories: - "Developments" - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "coronavirus" - "covid19" - "moderna" - "pfizer" - "vaccine" - "vaccines" --- # Scientists Post Recipe for Moderna’s COVID Vaccine for Free Online ![Stanford scientists have posted the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines' mRNA sequences on GitHub for anybody to download.]() *\Image: Image via Pixabay/Victor Tangermann\* A team of scientists at Stanford University have posted the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine's mRNA sequences it uses to fight the coronavirus and posted it [on GitHub for anybody to download](), [*Motherboard* reports](). "RNA vaccines have become a key tool in moving forward through the challenges raised both in the current pandemic and in numerous other public health and medical challenges," reads the four-page PDF posted by the scientists. Though the work sounds like textbook reverse engineering, the scientists are pushing back against that narrative. "We didn't reverse engineer the vaccine," Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura told *Motherboard*. "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." The news comes days after anonymous sources [told *CNBC*]() that the White House is considering suspending intellectual property protections for vaccines and treatments, a response to growing pressure from lawmakers from the developing world. "Despite their ubiquity, sequences are not always available for such RNAs," reads [the Stanford document](). "Standard methods facilitate such sequencing. In this note, we provide experimental sequence information for the RNA components of the initial Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, allowing a working assembly of the former and a confirmation of previously reported sequence information for the latter RNA." The team used discards or "dregs" left in used vials of the vaccine to analyze the RNA sequence. "None of the residual ‘dregs’ that we used for this work came from vaccines that could have been otherwise administered," the team told *Motherboard*. "Think of the thin layer of milk coating a carton that had been fully used and emptied yesterday and sitting on the kitchen counter—if we sequenced that, we'd get a full picture of the cow genome even though the small quantity of milk would be of no use." The team reportedly asked Moderna if they could include the sequence in an upcoming publication, but didn't get any "response or objection from them," as they told *Motherboard*. While having the RNA sequence publicly available does make it more accessible in some sense, setting up the supply chain to actually manufacture vaccines on a significant scale is, needless to say, extremely complicated. ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()