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

本项目将开发两种检测SARS病毒的分子诊断方法。一种是基于常用的病毒聚合酶链反应（PCR）技术，另一种是基于新的RNA扩增方法，滚动链扩增（RCA）。使用RCA可在SARS病毒感染的早期阶段提供一种灵敏、无污染和可靠的测试，这是目前尚不具备的。通过监测病毒的变化，研究病毒的进化和突变是非常重要的。这些变化对于确定病毒的起源、其运动以及预测特定病毒株的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主要菌株，因此通过拟议的研究可以很好地解决与诊断有关的病毒变异问题。总之，这些数据可能会被证明是有用的，在未来的疫苗开发，已经从一些流感病毒明显。在疾病过程中的病毒载量将用于预测疾病的预后，并确定超级传播者，因为他们可能携带大量病毒，但临床症状较轻。该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，如艾滋病毒。

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.