Design and development of an at-home COVID-19 detection kit with custom-engineered microbial sensors

这项研究的总体目标是开发一种使用定制工程微生物传感器的家用新冠肺炎诊断测试。目前的新冠肺炎检测技术需要劳动密集型和资源消耗的方法，依赖于病毒遗传物质的纯化，然后通过高度专业化的仪器进行基因序列扩增和检测。尽管这种方法非常具体和敏感，但将样品送到可以进行此类技术实验的认可实验室所需的瓶颈和延误可能会导致数天的延误。到目前为止，开发替代新冠肺炎检测技术的研究主要集中在核糖核酸/脱氧核糖核酸方法或基于抗体的病毒颗粒检测上。我们提出的技术将引入一种全新的感染病原体检测方法。在这里，我们提出了一种定制工程生态友好型微生物的新方法，旨在检测新冠肺炎感染。我们计划用对新冠肺炎高度特异和敏感的生物传感器来改造这些微生物。我们设计的简单性在于这些工程微生物的自然指数增长能力。基本上，用我们的工程微生物菌株培养拭子样本就足以进行分析。这项新的化验结果将简单地显示培养物生长的缺失或存在。我们对新冠肺炎检测的激进方法将成为传染病诊断检测领域的新前沿。

The overall goal of this study is to develop an at-home COVID-19 diagnostic test using custom-engineered microbial sensors. Current COVID-19 detection techniques require labor-intensive and resource-draining methodologies that rely on purification of viral genetic material followed by genetic sequence amplification and detection on highly specialized instruments. Although this approach is highly specific and sensitive, the bottleneck and delays required to get samples to accredited labs that can perform such technical experiments can cause multi-day delays. To date, studies developing alternate COVID-19 detection techniques are focusing on RNA/DNA methodologies or antibody based viral particle detection. Our proposed technology will introduce a completely novel approach to infectious pathogen detection. Here, we propose a novel approach of custom-engineering eco-friendly microorganisms designed to detect COVID-19 infections. We plan to engineer these microbes with biological sensors that are highly specific and sensitive for COVID-19. The simplicity of our design lies in the natural exponential growth capacity of these engineered microbes. Essentially, incubation of swab samples with our engineered microbial strains will be sufficient for analysis. The readout of this novel assay will be simply the absence or presence of culture growth. Our radical approach to COVID-19 detection will serve as a new frontier in the field of diagnostic assays for infectious diseases.