Sensitive POC (point-of-care) system to detect virus from the environmental and fecal samples using graphene oxide

J. Min
Chung-Ang University,
Korea

Keywords: graphene oxide, SARS-CoV19, lab chip, automation

Summary:

Over the past few years we have been suffering greatly from new virus, SARS-CoV-2. Fortunately, vaccines and quarantine tools have been developed fast by the new technologies, and above all, the virus itself has changed to coexist with humans, and we are slowly being freed from this suffering. When infectious diseases outbreaks, fast detection of the source of infection is of great importance to preventing the spread of the infectious disease. In SARS-CoV-2 case, the infected person and virus contaminated environments have been successfully found and quarantined using immune-based rapid assay technology (RAT) and nucleic acid-based assay technology (NAT), which have been developed for decades. Nevertheless, RAT-based products do not meet market demand in terms of sensitivity, and NAT products do not solve labor-intensive problem. More ever, complicated process is required to detect viruses in environmental samples such as large surfaces or other biological samples such as feces rather than blood. In this study, we developed a sample preparation technology and automated system for nucleic acid-based detection of pathogen present on the large surface. The key process was bactria/virus concentration from relatively large volume buffer system in which pathogen collected from the surface re-released. The graphene oxide (GO) coated glass microbeads was employed for pathogen adsorption, nucleic acid extraction, and free RNA fragment removal. We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and bacteria in 12 individual negative pressure wards in which patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection had been hospitalized. This difference in adsorption capability between double-stranded and single-stranded nucleic acids which GO possesses can be applied to various analytical system. We also show the portable point-of-care biosensor to detect norovirus from fecal sample in simple plastic chip.