Reading the ingredient list is like looking at the side of a cereal box, except that you need a degree in organic chemistry to understand it. We got help from various scientists and biotech entrepreneurs [including Greenlight Biosciences] to understand what each of the ingredients does and make some educated guesses about others.

Pfizer’s vaccine is the first on the market that consists of actual genetic information from a virus in the form of messenger RNA, or mRNA, a type of molecule whose usual job is to transport copies of genetic instructions around a cell to guide the assembly of proteins.

The mRNA in the vaccine, to be sure, isn’t quite the same as the stuff in your body. That’s good, because a cell is full of defenses ready to chop up RNA, especially any that doesn’t belong there. To avoid that, what’s known as “modified nucleosides” have been substituted for some of the mRNA building blocks.

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  The National: Africa needs to be self-reliant in vaccine production
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  Amin Khan welcomed as Chief Scientific Officer, Human Health
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  Financial Times: How to vaccinate the world
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  GreenLight partners with Fraunhofer IME
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  A blueprint to vaccinate the world
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  The Economist: Novel vaccines performed well