Scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, along with scientists from IISc (India Institute of Science), have demonstrated a noncanonical nucleic acid-based G-quadruplex (GQ) topology targeted reliable conformational polymorphism (GQ-RCP) platform to diagnose COVID-19 clinical samples. This work has been published recently in the journal ACS Sensors and the team has also filed a patent for the novel technology.

The technology platform can also be used to detect other DNA/RNA pathogens such as HIV, influenza, HCV, Zika, Ebola, bacteria, and other mutating/evolving pathogens.

The platform lays greater emphasis on deciphering and systematic characterization of a unique set of interactions in nucleic acids to attain stable and reliable noncanonical DNA/RNA targets. The RCP-based target validation is a general and modular approach for the development of noncanonical nucleic acid-targeted diagnostic platforms for diverse pathogens, including bacteria and DNA/RNA viruses.