A new screening test has been developed that is not only able to diagnose the presence of Sars-Cov-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) in a few minutes, but also to sequence it and therefore to understand if you are running into its variants.
The team of researchers from the Salk Institute in San Diego developed this new system, called Nirvana.
In a work published in the scientific journal Med, scholars tell of the achievement of this result.
Unlike the classic PCR buffer test, the polymerase chain reaction test, which goes through temperature to separate DNA strands and copy them, Rpa (isothermal amplification of polymerase recombinase) uses proteins to achieve the same thing in just 20 minutes.
This technology allows researchers to copy longer stretches of DNA and probe multiple genes at the same time.
A small handheld device capable of examining 96 samples at the same time was described in the article.
The RPA is able to ascertain, together, influenza A, human adenovirus and non-Sars-CoV-2 human coronavirus.
In just 15 minutes, the researchers report, the device starts reporting positive and negative results.
Within three hours, he finalizes the results on all 96 samples, including sequences from five Sars-CoV-2 regions that are particularly prone to accumulate mutations leading to new variants such as the English one.
For scholars, a portable test like this could be used for rapid virus detection in schools, airports or ports.