N1-methylpseudouridine found within COVID-19 mRNA vaccines produces faithful protein products

Given the interest in the COVID mRNA vaccines, we sought to investigate how the RNA modification N1-methylpseudouridine (and its related modification, pseudouridine) is read by ribosomes and reverse transcriptases. By looking at reverse transcriptase data, we can gain information on how the modification affects duplex stability, which may have important consequences for the tRNA-mRNA interactions found in the ribosome. Overall design: Deep sequencing of cDNA generated by reverse transcribing synthetic RNA containing no modifications, a single uridine to pseudouridine substitution, or a single uridine to N1-methylpseudouridine substitution. The RNA was transcribed using both M-MLV and AMV.