Fig. 5. Experimental evaluation of LinearDesign-generated mRNAs encoding VZV gE protein.
a, Summary of chemical stability of and protein expression from VZV gE mRNA designs and the corresponding immune response (induction of anti-gE IgG) in mice. The ‘sweet spot’ region is highlighted with light blue shading. b, Non-denaturing agarose gel characterization of mRNA showing the correlation of gel mobility with minimum free energy; for gel source data, see Supplementary Fig. 1b. c, Chemical stability of mRNAs upon incubation in 10 mM Mg2+ buffer at 37 °C. Data are from three independent experiments. d, Protein expression levels from mRNAs 48 h after transfection into HEK293 cells, as determined by flow cytometry. MFI values are derived from three independent experiments. Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA with Dunn’s multiple comparisons with the gE-Ther group. e, C57BL/6 mice (n = 5) were immunized intramuscularly with two doses of formulated mRNA with a two-week interval. End-point titre of anti-gE IgG is shown. Two-tailed Mann–Whitney U test. Data are mean ± s.d. (c,d) or geometric mean ± geometric s.d. (e). See Extended Data Fig. 8 for extra experimental results, Supplementary Fig. 11 for predicted secondary structures and Supplementary Table 3 for detailed computational and experimental data.