Cas12a-assisted RTF-EXPAR for accurate, rapid and simple detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA

Developing highly accurate and simple approaches to rapidly identify and isolate SARS-CoV-2 infected patients is important for the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. We, herein, reported the performance of a Cas12a-assisted RTF-EXPAR strategy for the identification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. This assay combined the advantages of RTF-EXPAR with CRISPR-Cas12a can detect SARS-CoV-2 within 40 min, requiring only isothermal control. Particularly, the simultaneous use of EXPAR amplification and CRISPR improved the detection sensitivity, thereby realizing ultrasensitive SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection with a detection limit of 3.77 aM (∼2 copies/μL) in an end-point fluorescence read-out fashion, and at 4.81 aM (∼3 copies/μL) level via a smartphone-assisted analysis system (RGB analysis). Moreover, Cas12a increases the specificity by intrinsic sequence-specific template recognition. Overall, this method is fast, sensitive, and accurate, needing minimal equipment, which holds great promise to meet the requirements of point-of-care molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2.