The generation and detection of 2019-nCoV subgenomic RNA / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is a newly discovered pathogen in 2019. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has greatly affected global health and the world economy. It is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus, which generates subgenomic RNA from discontinuous transcription of the replication-transcription complex (RTC). This discontinuous transcription is regulated by transcriptional regulatory sequences/elements, produced by switching templates on genomic RNA. At present, the detection methods of subgenomic RNA include the next generation sequencing, nanopore sequencing, reverse transcription dropletdigital polymerase chain reaction, reverse transcription real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, etc. Subgenomic RNA is produced only when the virus infects cell, so it may be a novel marker for viral replication.