A Paper-based Assay for the Colorimetric Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Variants at Single-nucleotide Resolution

Overview

Journal Nat Biomed Eng

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Biomedical Engineering

Date 2022 Jul 14

PMID 35835993

Authors

Ting Zhang

Ruijie Deng

Yuxi Wang

Chengyong Wu

Kaixiang Zhang

Chunyan Wang

Ningqiang Gong

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro

Xucong Teng

Chunrong Yang

Ting Xue

Yong Zhang

Yun Hu

Qiang He

Weimin Li

Jinghong Li

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has highlighted the need for versatile diagnostic assays that can discriminate among emerging variants of the virus. Here we report the development and performance benchmarking of an inexpensive (approximately US$0.30 per test) assay for the rapid (sample-to-answer time within 30 min) colorimetric detection of SARS-CoV-2 variants. The assay, which we integrated into foldable paper strips, leverages nucleic acid strand-displacement reactions, the thermodynamic energy penalty associated with single-base-pair mismatches and the metal-ion-controlled enzymatic cleavage of urea to amplify the recognition of viral RNAs for the colorimetric readout of changes in pH via a smartphone. For 50 throat swab samples, the assay simultaneously detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and mutations specific to the SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha, Beta and Gamma, with 100% concordance with real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and RNA sequencing. Customizable and inexpensive paper-based assays for the detection of viruses and their variants may facilitate viral surveillance.

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