Researchers are committed to developing a test that can detect Covid faster than RT-PCR

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley are working to develop a test that can detect Covid-19 faster than the RT-PCR test by combining two different types of CRISPR enzymes, creating a test that can detect small amounts of viral RNA The method is less than an hour.

The team is led by Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his invention of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing. David Savage and Patrick Hsu are also part of the team. According to the news agency ANI, the results of this study were published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

However, this new technology cannot match the sensitivity of RT-PCR, but it is at a stage where only a few copies of the virus can be detected per microliter of liquid. Currently, it can detect 30 copies per microliter—enough to survey the population and limit the spread of infection.

Savage, a professor of molecular and cell biology, said: “If the test is convenient and fast enough, the sensitivity of PCR is not needed to basically capture and diagnose Covid-19 in the community.” He further explained: “We want to do our best Promoting the development of biochemistry allows you to imagine a very convenient format in which you can test every day, for example before going to work.”

The team has also developed another technology called Tandem Rapid Integrated Nuclease Detection (FIND-IT), which can perform rapid and inexpensive diagnostic tests for several other infectious diseases. Tina Liu, a research scientist in the Doudna Lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), is a CRISPR center involving scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco. She said that the project initially started to affect Covid-19, but it can be applied to To detect other diseases, because CRISPR is programmable.

“You can load the sequence against influenza virus or HIV virus or any type of RNA virus into the CRISPR enzyme, and the system may work in the same way. This paper really proves that this kind of biochemistry is a simpler The method of detecting RNA, and the ability to detect the RNA in a sensitive and rapid time range, may be suitable for future applications in immediate diagnosis,” Liu said.