Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences (Jul 2021)

Visual and Rapid Diagnosis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae Using Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Combined With a Polymer Nanoparticle–Based Biosensor in Clinical Application

  • Xu Chen,
  • Xu Chen,
  • Qingxue Zhou,
  • Xueli Wu,
  • Shuoshi Wang,
  • Rui Liu,
  • Shilei Dong,
  • Wei Yuan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2021.702134
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8

Abstract

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Neisseriagonorrhoeae is a host-adapted human pathogen that causes sexually transmitted gonorrhea and remains to be a serious global public health challenge, especially in low- and middle-income regions. It is vital to devise a reliable, simple, cost-saving, and easy-to-use assay for detecting the N. gonorrhoeae agent. In the current study, we firstly report a novel approach, loop-mediated isothermal amplification linked with a polymer nanoparticle–based biosensor (LAMP-PNB), that was used for identifying N. gonorrhoeae in clinical samples. The results showed that the LAMP primers based on the orf1 gene were valid for development of the N. gonorrhoeae-LAMP-PNB assay. The detection system with optimal conditions could be performed at a fixed temperature of 64°C for 40 min. The whole process, including genomic DNA preparation (approximately 10 min), LAMP reaction (40 min), and PNB reporting (approximately 2 min), could be accomplished within 60 min. The limit of detection (LoD) of the N. gonorrhoeae-LAMP-PNB assay was 50 copies per test. The specificity of the current assay was 100%, and no cross-reactions to non–N. gonorrhoeae isolates were observed. These results confirmed that the N. gonorrhoeae-LAMP-PNB technique is a reliable, specific, sensitive, rapid, low-cost, and easy-to-use method for detecting gonococci isolates. More importantly, this assay has great potential to develop a point-of-care (POC) testing method in clinical practice, especially in resource-constrained regions.

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