COVID-19 진단기법: Primer에 따른 SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)의 핵산기반 진단법 분석

Since the first outbreak in Wuhan, China, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly around the world and there are still many confirmed cases worldwide. In this serious situation, the rapid diagnosis and classification of patients who are infected with COVID-19 are very important to individuals and society. There are two main methods of testing in COVID-19: nucleic acid testing and immunological testing, but the test currently used in the confirmatory assay is nucleic acid testing, due to its accuracy. This nucleic acid test uses RT-PCR which is using reverse transcriptase, because SARS-CoV-2 is RNA virus. One of the important factors determining accuracy in RT-PCR is the primer sequences. In other words, it is very important for the accuracy of the test that it adheres exactly to the target gene. Therefore, this review focused on primer and described the test methods for SARS-CoV-2 detection. The main targets of the primers in SARS-CoV-2 were ORF1ab/RdRp gene, E gene, N gene, and S gene. I conducted comparisons of several primer probe sets of these target genes, and also checked the primer configuration of several commercial diagnostic kits to inspect the actual utilization. As a result, most of the genes I mentioned were frequently used as targets, and most of them were highly reliable.