Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS CoV) is a positive-sense, singlestranded RNA virus of the Coronaviridae family. The genome of this virus is around 30K nucleotides in length arrange in a linear formation. Infection with this virus causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an infectious respiratory tract infection. It was most recently brought to prevalence in a near pandemic in 2003 where it spread from China to more than 30 countries within a matter of weeks. The virus is transmitted by droplet transmission as well as suspected airborne transmission. Upon infection, which is by membrane fusion, the host translation machinery translates Open Reading Frames 1a and 1b into the viral replicase protein, the Coronavirus Main Protease (Mpro or 3CLpro). This protease is used in the synthesis of the viral replication complex which allows synthesis of the full length negative strand of RNA. The RNA is then transcribed to mRNA in a series of nested transcripts for each of the viruses major ORF’s which all contain identical leader sequences. The SARS-CoV genome contains five major ORFs that encode the replicase polyprotein, the Spike(S), Envelope(E), and Membrane(M) glycoproteins and Nucleocapsid (N) protein. As the proteins required for the formation of a new virus particle are now present, the new virion is assembled and released from the cell by exocytosis. The initial symptoms presented appear flu-like and the typical symptoms include fever, lethargy, muscle pains, cough and sore throats, nasal congestion as well as other nonspecific symptoms. The symptom specific to all patients is a fever above 39°C. In some cases, as the disease progresses, the patient may encounter shortness of breath as well as chest pains. Diagnosis is usually made by chest X-rays as well as laboratory tests such as ELISA and IFA. Due to the fact that the disease is caused by a virus, there is no specific treatment and typically symptomatic treatment is recommended.
The genesig Real-Time PCR COVID-19 is approved for FDA-EUA use.
Product Features:
Rapid detection and exclusive to the COVID-19 strain
Does not detect other related coronavirus strains
High priming efficiency
Accurate controls to confirm extraction, and assay validity
