40 minutes RT-qPCR Assay for Screening Spike N501Y and HV69-70del Mutations

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Abstract

A one-step reverse transcription and real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) test was developed for rapid screening (40 minutes) of the Spike N501Y and HV69-70del mutations in SARS-CoV-2 positive samples. The test also targets a conserved region of SARS-CoV-2 Orf1ab as an internal control. The samples containing both the N501Y and HV69-70del mutations are concluded as VOC-202012/01 positive. Samples suspected to be positive for B.1.351 or P.1 are the N501Y positive and HV69-70del negative cases. Limit of detection (LOD) of the kit for Orf1ab target is 500 copies/mL, while that of the N501, Y501 and HV69-70del targets are 5000 copies/mL. The developed assay was applied to 165 clinical samples containing SARS-CoV-2 from 32 different lineages. The SARS-CoV-2 lineages were determined via the next-generation sequencing (NGS). The RT-qPCR results were in 100% agreement with the NGS results that 19 samples were N501Y and HV69-70del positive, 10 samples were N501Y positive and HV69-70del negative, 1 sample was N501Y negative and HV69-70del positive, and 135 samples were N501Y and HV69-70del negative. All the VOC-202012/01 positive samples were detected in people who have traveled from England to Turkey. The RT-qPCR test and the Sanger sequencing was further applied to 1000 SARS-CoV-2 positive clinical samples collected in Jan2021 from the 81 different provinces of Turkey. The RT-qPCR results were in 100% agreement with the Sanger sequencing results that 32 samples were N501Y positive and HV69-70del negative, 4 samples were N501Y negative and HV69-70del positive, 964 samples were N501Y and HV69-70del negative. The specificity of the 40 minutes RT-qPCR assay relative to the sequencing-based technologies is 100%. The developed assay is an advantageous tool for timely and representative estimation of the N501Y positive variants’ prevalence because it allows testing a much higher portion of the SARS-CoV-2 positives in much lower time compared to the sequencing-based technologies.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.26.428302: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains
    SentencesResources
    SARS-CoV-2 S protein mutation HV69-70del is also targeted in both reactions to differentiate VOC-202012/01 from the other N501Y containing variants (Table 1).
    SARS-CoV-2 S protein mutation HV69-70del
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.