A smartphone-controllable molecular diagnostic platform for SARS-CoV-2 detection by reverse-transcription recombinase polymerase amplification

We constructed a portable molecular diagnostic microsystem, enabling the whole processes of genetic analysis for SARS-CoV-2. The proposed platform was a miniaturized size and was comprised of three main parts: a microfluidic device with a 3D-printed solution loading cartridge, an operating system including a tailor-made heater board, a syringe pump and an optical fluorescence detector, and a smartphone with a customized app for the remote and automatic control. The microfluidic device was designed to control the complicated fluidic flow through only the passive valves, and could perform the RNA extraction from the viral lysate via glass membranes and the target gene amplification by reverse-transcription recombinase polymerase amplification (RT-RPA). The 3D-printed cartridge allowed the facile chemical solution storage and loaded a designated solution into the microfluidic device. A smartphone with a browser-based app could control the on-and-off status of solenoid valves, the workflow of a syringe pump to automatically introduce solutions on a chip, the heater board to supply the constant temperature for RT-RPA, and the periodic activation of the Pi camera and a 488 nm laser to measure the fluorescence signal in the reaction chambers that showed the amplification profiles on the smartphone display in real-time. Using the proposed smartphone-controllable diagnostic platform, the N gene and S gene of SARS-CoV-2 were successfully detected at a limit-of-detection (LOD) of 10 copies/mu L within 1 hr in a sample-to-answer-out format. Ten out of 22 clinical samples were successfully analyzed for SARS-CoV-2, demonstrating the practical applications for the on-site diagnostics of patient samples.