Biologists & Medicine · Medicine
Katalin Karikó & mRNA
Decades of rejected grants, a demotion at Penn, and one key insight with Drew Weissman: swapping uridine for pseudouridine stops mRNA from triggering inflammation, making the COVID vaccines possible.
Step 1 of 4 · Overview25 min read ·
Key idea
Prereqs: DNA → RNA → protein; Immune system. Next: CRISPR; AI for science. Sources: Karikó, Buckstein, Ni & Weissman, *Immunity* 23 (2005); Karikó, *Breaking Through* (2023); Nobel Prize press release (2023).Next: 1. The problem