Peptide beacon integrated planar waveguide sensor for low-cost, rapid, and highly sensitive detection of COVID19
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
11 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. EST
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Soumya Pratap Tripathy, PhD student
Media Arts and Sciences
MIT Media Lab
The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 continues to pose a significant global health threat. Along with vaccines and targeted therapeutics, there is a critical need for rapid diagnostic solutions. In this work, we employ a deep learning-based protein design to engineer molecular beacons that function as conformational switches for high sensitivity detection of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (S-RBD). The beacons contain two peptides, together forming a heterodimer, and a binding ligand between them to detect the presence of S-RBD.
In the absence of S-RBD (OFF), the peptide beacons adopt a closed conformation that opens when bound to the S-RBD and produces a fluorescence signal (ON), utilizing a fluorophore-quencher pair at the two ends of the heterodimer stems. We integrated these beacons on a planar waveguide-based fluorescence sensor to construct a point-of-care diagnostic platform for SARS-CoV-2. The device can detect the S-RBD with limits of detection (LoD) in the sub-femtomolar range. We envision that the platform will be a rapid at-home diagnostic device in the future.
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