Abstract
Frequent and widespread testing of members of the population who are asymptomatic for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is essential for the mitigation of the transmission of the virus. Despite the recent increases in testing capacity, tests based on quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays cannot be easily deployed at the scale required for population-wide screening. Here, we show that next-generation sequencing of pooled samples tagged with sample-specific molecular barcodes enables the testing of thousands of nasal or saliva samples for SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a single run without the need for RNA extraction. The assay, which we named SwabSeq, incorporates a synthetic RNA standard that facilitates end-point quantification and the calling of true negatives, and that reduces the requirements for automation, purification and sample-to-sample normalization. We used SwabSeq to perform 80,000 tests, with an analytical sensitivity and specificity comparable to or better than traditional qPCR tests, in less than two months with turnaround times of less than 24 h. SwabSeq could be rapidly adapted for the detection of other pathogens.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 657-665 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Nature Biomedical Engineering |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank J. Semel for her support. We also thank the staff at the Held Foundation and the Carol Moss Foundation for their support of this project; staff at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine’s Dean’s Office for their support; Fast Grants Inc. for funding this work; L. Starita, B. Martin, J. Gehring, S. Srivatsan, J. Shendure and the members of the Covid Testing Scaleup Slack for their input, guidance and openness in sharing their processes; M. Berro for her guidance with the FDA EUA201963; the clinical laboratory scientists at the UCLA Clinical Microbiology laboratory for their assistance in collecting and processing the remnant specimens and data; our staff at the UCLA SwabSeq COVID19 Testing laboratory for deploying our CLIA test; and L. Yost and A. Martin for their advice and guidance during our scaling process. This work was supported by funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (to L.K.) and DP5OD024579 (to V.A.A.). I.L. is supported by T32GM008042. Figures 1a,f and 3b created with BioRender.com.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't