Enabling coronavirus detection using CRISPR-Cas13: An open-access SHERLOCK research protocol

To address the coronavirus outbreak, researchers at Harvard and MIT developed a research protocol to characterize the development of CRISPR-based diagnostics for Covid-19. Their initial research protocol has not been tested on patient samples yet, but it provides a framework for establishing a SHERLOCK based Covid-19 test. The CRISPR-Cas13-based SHERLOCK system has accurately detected several viruses in patient samples using synthetic Covid-19 fragments. The research protocol has three steps: incubate extracted RNA with isothermal amplification reaction for 25 min at 42 C, then incubate reaction from step 1 with Cas13 protein, guide RNA, and reporter molecule for 30 min at 37 C, and finally dip the test strip into reaction from step 2, and result should appear within five minutes. This system is working well and researchers hope to use it to detect the virus in patients. Manufacturing, testing, and verification are still needed, so the process will take quite some time. There are a series of guidelines that they need to follow to make sure it could be used legally. The masterminds behind this, Feng Zhang, Omar Abudayyeh, and Jonathan Gootenberg, have shared scientific instructions for detecting COVID-19 using CRISPR diagnostics and will actively be updating the community about their research.