Evaluating and optimizing Acid-pH and Direct Lysis RNA extraction for SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in whole saliva.

COVID-19 has been a global public health and economic challenge. Screening for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a key part of disease mitigation while the world continues to move forward, and lessons learned will benefit disease detection beyond COVID-19. Saliva specimen collection offers a less invasive, time- and cost-effective alternative to standard nasopharyngeal swabs. We optimized two different methods of saliva sample processing for RT-qPCR testing. Two methods were optimized to provide two cost-efficient ways to do testing for a minimum of four samples by pooling in a 2.0 mL tube and decrease the need for more highly trained personnel. Acid-pH-based RNA extraction method can be done without the need for expensive kits. Direct Lysis is a quick one-step reaction that can be applied quickly. Our optimized Acid-pH and Direct Lysis protocols are reliable and reproducible, detecting the beta-2 microglobulin (B2M) mRNA in saliva as an internal control from 97 to 96.7% of samples, respectively. The cycle threshold (Ct) values for B2M were significantly higher in the Direct Lysis protocol than in the Acid-pH protocol. The limit of detection for N1 gene was higher in Direct Lysis at ≤ 5 copies/µL than Acid-pH. Saliva samples collected over the course of several days from two COVID-positive individuals demonstrated Ct values for N1 that were consistently higher from Direct Lysis compared to Acid-pH. Collectively, this work supports that each of these techniques can be used to screen for SARS-CoV-2 in saliva for a cost-effective screening platform.

The deregulated promoter methylation of the Polo-like kinases as a potential biomarker in hematological malignancies.

Deregulation of Polo-like kinase (PLK) transcription via promoter methylation results in perturbations at the protein level, which has been associated with oncogenesis. Our objective was to further characterize the methylation profile for PLK1-4 in bone marrow aspirates displaying blood neoplasms as well as in cells grown in vitro. Clinically, we have determined that more than 70% of lymphoma and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)/leukemia bone marrow extracts display a hypermethylated PLK4 promoter region in comparison to the normal. Decreased PLK4 protein expression due to promoter hypermethylation was negatively correlated with JAK2 overexpression, a common occurrence in hematological malignancies. In vitro examination of the PLKs under biologically relevant condition of 5% O2 revealed that the highly conserved PLKs respond to lower oxygen tension at both the DNA and the protein level. These findings suggest that PLK promoter methylation status correlates with disease and tumorigenesis in blood neoplasms and could serve as a biomarker.