mRNA vaccine badge

Data scientist Paul Klinger has made a small badge showing a schematic of an mRNA vaccine nanoparticle and blinking the RNA sequence of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines.

The RNA for the Moderna vaccine is from is from https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV2-spike-encoding-mRNA-sequences-for-vaccines-BNT-162b2-and-mRNA-1273 with an added poly-A tail of similar length to the Pfizer one (just a guess). The Pfizer sequence is from https://berthub.eu/articles/11889.doc

The sequences are stored encoded into 2 bits per nucleotide using encode_genome.py.

Current draw is ~3mA depending on which color LEDs are active at the moment (the blue ones are a lot more efficient than the red ones). A CR2032 coin cell should last for at least 10h of continuous use (one run through the sequence takes ~10min, and it automatically shuts off afterwards). Standby current draw is ~0.15µA, should last basically forever (years).

The badge uses an ATtiny1617 microcontroller and colored LEDs.

See the video below and the GitHub repo for additional information.


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