Detecting Coronavirus Using Mass Spectrometer

admin September 3, 2020 Daily Current Affairs

Using mass spectrometer, researchers at the Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) have been able
- To detect novel coronavirus with 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity with respect to RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction).
Detection of the virus takes less than three minutes; time from sample preparation to detection takes less than 30 minutes.
The new method can directly detect the virus without amplifying the RNA for detection, as is the case with RT-PCR.
The new method relies on detecting the presence of two peptides which are unique to SARS-CoV-2 virus and not seen in any other coronavirus or other viruses.
Though seven peptides were found to be unique to SARS-CoV-2, only two peptides are used for quick virus detection.
One of the peptides is the spike protein and the other is a replicase protein.
The unique peptides were seen in over 54,000 genomic sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus deposited in a public database (GISAID) as on July 1.
The mass spectrometer is expensive but it would cost only about ₹100 per test, and so cheaper than RT-PCR.