Development of rapid, sensitive & cost effective technology for the diagnosis of SARS using rolling circle amplification

该项目将开发两种分子诊断方法来检测SARS病毒。一种将基于常用的病毒聚合酶链反应（PCR）技术，另一种将基于一种新的RNA扩增方法，滚动链扩增（RCA）。使用RCA将在SARS病毒感染的早期阶段提供一种敏感、无污染和可靠的检测方法，这是目前无法获得的。通过监测病毒发生的变化来研究病毒的进化和突变是很重要的。这些变化对于确定病毒的起源、运动和预测特定病毒株发病机制的变化模式至关重要。由于这些分析涉及来自患者的各种SARS原发菌株，因此通过拟议的研究可以很好地解决与诊断相关的病毒变异性问题。综上所述，这些数据可能对未来的疫苗开发有用，正如许多流感病毒所证明的那样。疾病过程中的病毒载量将用于预测疾病预后，也可用于识别超级传播者，因为它们可能携带大量病毒但临床症状较轻。这个项目将是分子诊断的一个里程碑，不仅对SARS病毒，而且对其他病毒性疾病，如HIV，都是如此。

This project will develop two molecular diagnostic methods to detect the SARS virus. One will be based on a commonly used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology for viruses and the other will be based on a newly RNA amplification method, rolling chain amplification (RCA). Using RCA will provide a sensitive, contamination-free and reliable test during early stages of SARS virus infection that is not currently available.It is important to study the viral evolution and mutations by monitoring changes occurring in the virus. These changes are critical in defining the origin of the virus, its movements, and predicting changing patterns in pathogenesis of particular viral strains. As these analyses involve a variety of primary strains of SARS from patients, the issue of viral variability in relation to diagnosis can be addressed well through the proposed study. Together, these data may prove to be useful in future vaccine development, as has been evident from a number of flu viruses. Viral load during the course of disease will be used to predict disease prognosis and also to identify super-spreaders as they may carry large amount of virus but have less severe clinical symptoms. This project will be a milestone in molecular diagnosis, not only for the SARS virus, but also to other viral diseases such as HIV.