Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
An outbreak of COVID-19, caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China in December 2019, spread throughout the country and around the world, quickly. The primary detection technique for SARS-CoV-2, the reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)–based approach, requires expensive reagents and equipment and skilled personnel. In addition, for SARS-CoV-2 detection, specimens are usually shipped to a designated laboratory for testing, which may extend the diagnosis and treatment time of patients with COVID-19. The latest research shows that clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)–based approaches can quickly provide visual, rapid, ultrasensitive, and specific detection of SARS-CoV-2 at isothermal conditions. Therefore, CRISPR-based approaches are expected to be developed as attractive alternatives to conventional RT-PCR methods for the efficient and accurate detection of SARS-CoV-2. Recent advances in the field of CRISPR-based biosensing technologies for SARS-CoV-2 detection and insights into their potential use in many applications are reviewed in this article.
Introduction
Coronaviruses (CoVs), with 4 major structural proteins including spike, membrane, envelope, and nucleoprotein, are positive-sense, single-strand RNA viruses.[1,2] Before SARS-CoV-2, there were 6 CoVs that were known to be pathogenic to humans: HCoV-OC43, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-229E, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV,[3–5]with the latter 2 being highly transmissible and pathogenic. SARS-CoV-2 (previously named 2019-nCoV) is a new coronavirus causing COVID-19, which was first observed in December 2019 in Wuhan, China.
