Viruses, Vol. 13, Pages 1875: A Reverse Transcription Recombinase-Aided Amplification Method for Rapid and Point-of-Care Detection of SARS-CoV-2, including Variants

Viruses, Vol. 13, Pages 1875: A Reverse Transcription Recombinase-Aided Amplification Method for Rapid and Point-of-Care Detection of SARS-CoV-2, including Variants Viruses doi: 10.3390/v13091875 Authors: Fengyun Li Ping He Dongyan Xiong Yakun Lou Qiaosheng Pu Haixia Zhang Huige Zhang Junping Yu The worldwide pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its emergence of variants needs rapid and point-of-care testing methods for a broad diagnosis. The regular RT-qPCR is time-consuming and limited in central laboratories, so a broad and large-scale screening requirement calls for rapid and in situ methods. In this regard, a reverse transcription recombinase-aided amplification (RT-RAA) is proposed here for the rapid and point-of-care detection of SARS-CoV-2. A set of highly conserved primers and probes targeting more than 98% of SARS-CoV-2 strains, including currently circulating variants (four variants of concerns (VOCs) and three variants of interest (VOIs)), was used in this study. With the preferred primers, the RT-RAA assay showed a 100% specificity to SARS-CoV-2 from eight other respiratory RNA viruses. Moreover, the assay here is of a high sensitivity and 0.48 copies/μL can be detected within 25 min at a constant temperature (42 °C), which can be realized on portable equipment. Furthermore, the RT-RAA assay demonstrated its high agreement for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in clinical specimens compared with...
Source: Viruses - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research