Researchers develop a method to detect SARS-CoV-2 and variants simultaneously
Researchers demonstrate a method of detecting the presence and mutations in the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus using the smaller and cheaper Oxford Nanopore sequencer, a method they believe could make pandemic surveillance faster and cheaper.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to great research efforts in viral diagnostics. New methods have been developed to reduce diagnosis time and cost, increase sensitivity and specificity, and allow large-scale diagnostic methods to be carried out.
Several strategies were proposed that used massive parallel DNA sequencing for large-scale diagnostics. These methods used DNA molecular barcodes during sample preparation, pooling the samples for doing the assay “in one run,” and breaking down the results using bioinformatics processing.