Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

CRISPR tool scales up to interrogate a huge line-up of viral suspects

Rapid, reliable identification of an unknown viral infection is challenging. Use of CRISPR technology can simultaneously detect nucleic acids of many viruses and pinpoint specific ones, such as the virus that causes COVID-19.
  1. Gregory A. Storch

    1. Gregory A. Storch is at the School of Medicine, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri 63110, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

The current severe effects of the global pandemic of COVID-19 reveals our vulnerability to emerging infectious diseases1,2. It also highlights the need for tools to detect a broad range of disease-causing agents, both known and recently emerged, that could threaten public health. However, the genetic diversity of the potential perpetrators, which include viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa, presents a practical difficulty. Molecular methods that detect nucleic acids are uniquely suited to this task because such infectious agents contain DNA, RNA, or both, that enables their recognition and identification. Feasible surveillance methods for tracking emerging global infections must have broad detection capability, be suited to high-throughput use and have low cost per test. Writing in Nature, Ackerman et al.3 describe an attempt to meet these requirements using a diagnostic detection platform they have created, called CARMEN (combinatorial arrayed reactions for multiplexed evaluation of nucleic acids).

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 582, 188-189 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01447-w

References

  1. Smolinski, M. S., Hamburg, M. A. & Lederberg, J. (eds) Microbial Threats to Health in the 21st Century (National Academies Press, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Morens, D. M. & Fauci, A. S. PLoS Pathog. 9, e1003467 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Ackerman, C. M. et al. Nature 582, 277–282 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Myhrvold, C. et al. Science 360, 444–448 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Terns, M. P. Mol. Cell 72, 404–412 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Broughton, J. P. et al. Nature Biotechnol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0513-4 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Wang D. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 15687–15692 (2002).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Hanson, K. E. & Couturier, M. R. Clin. Infect. Dis. 63, 1361–1367 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Wu, G., Miller, S. & Chiu, C. Y. Annu. Rev. Pathol. 14, 319–338 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links