Still unexplained
The hunt for the origins of Covid-19 has for the past four years been a tangled web of politics, power struggles, and international finger-pointing.
Indian scientists have developed a new technology platform for fluorometric detection of pathogens including the detection of SARS-CoV-2—that has caused the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The Team of scientists also demonstrated the potential of the new technology for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.
“This technology platform can also be used to detect other DNA/RNA pathogens such as HIV, influenza, HCV, Zika, Ebola, bacteria, and other mutating/evolving pathogens,” said a senior officer of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
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The scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), along with scientists from IISc (India Institute of Science), demonstrated a non canonical nucleic acid-based G-quadruplex (GQ) topology targeted reliable conformational polymorphism (GQ-RCP) platform to diagnose Covid-19 clinical samples, the Ministry said.
This work has also been published recently in the prestigious journal ‘ACS Sensors’ and the team has also filed a patent for the novel technology. This molecular detection platform can be integrated into field-deployable isothermal amplification assays with more reliability and sequence specificity, the Ministry said.
“The platform lays greater emphasis on deciphering and systematic characterization of a unique set of interactions in nucleic acids to attain stable and reliable noncanonical DNA/RNA targets. The RCP-based target validation is a general and modular approach for the development of noncanonical nucleic acid-targeted diagnostic platforms for diverse pathogens, including bacteria and DNA/RNA viruses,” said a senior officer of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The study conducted by the scientists has established a reliable strategy for fluorogenic organic molecule-based GQ-RCP platform to diagnose Covid-19 clinical samples and is the first practical demonstration of it, the Ministry said.
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