How Does COVID-19 Testing Actually Work?

2020-08-21

[public] 207K views, 14.3K likes, 755 dislikes audio only

Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 is easily the most defining feature of 2020. In the last 8 months the world has changed radically and there have been plenty of fumbles as countries struggle to deal with the chaos. One of the most important issues has been testing for the virus. In this video, I aim to demystify how that testing actually works down to the chemical level and show exactly how it's done. We'll be covering the viruses anatomy, as well as three types of test: PCR, LAMP and Antibody.

Earlier videos:

PCR - /youtube/video/7kJ2o7P8D00

Gel Electrophoresis - /youtube/video/sSKls2kNC4U

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00:00 - Introduction

04:00 - Virus Anatomy Overview

09:45 - PCR Overview

13:30 - Performing PCR

20:37 - Testing at Scale and Robots (Opentrons)

23:30 - LAMP overview

27:50 - Performing LAMP (Biofoundry)

30:30 - Pros/Cons of Genetic Tests

31:30 - Antibody Overview

32:50 - Performing Antibody Test

34:00 - How Antibody Tests Work

38:00 - Summary

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More resources, and citations:

Kurzgesagt Covid Overview: /youtube/video/BtN-goy9VOY

A great writeup about the virus's anatomy: https://bit.ly/2FJq6G8

JOGL: https://app.jogl.io/program/opencovid19

Biofoundry: https://foundry.bio/

Student Outbreak: https://bit.ly/2Qa3vEq

Student Outbreak 2: https://bit.ly/34hQgdl

Strokes In heathy people: https://bit.ly/2QdQREK

Organ Damage: https://bit.ly/3aHONhy

Aptamer Tests: https://rsc.li/3j2Fb3I

Variations in Test Accuracy: https://bit.ly/2YlojNV

Faulty probes: https://bit.ly/3aIPlDJ

Contaminated Swabs: https://bit.ly/34fnVEt

False positives FDA: https://bit.ly/3gojBFv

E protein structure: https://bit.ly/3aN5Yyb

MERS fact sheet: https://bit.ly/2CLUaQn

Incidence of thromboembolism: https://bit.ly/2YgiBgc

Stroke study: https://bit.ly/2E59Pei

Stroke 2: https://bit.ly/2Yk8yql

Cardiac infection: https://bit.ly/3l5DaWo

Asymptomatic infection rate: https://bit.ly/2YgiOju

Asymptomatic infection study: https://go.nature.com/2CLO2rb

Organ damage in asymptomatic pateints: https://bit.ly/2YfaMHJ

Wisconsin LAMP trial: https://bit.ly/3aIQfA7

Healthy people stroke: https://bit.ly/2YmKEuB

LAMP Assay design: https://bit.ly/3aJnqUv

Mutation geneology: https://bit.ly/34hxqTs

Cardiac outcomes: https://bit.ly/3hjJBmo

False negative rate: https://bit.ly/3j47I95

ACE2 distribution: https://go.nature.com/3aJsMyR

Long Haulers article: https://bit.ly/2EgU9nP

Long haulers Video: https://youtu.be/AuKAg52mz4s

Complete protein models: https://bit.ly/32akpIS

Antibody test: https://bit.ly/2CIXT0S

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Right after this video went up, one of my awesome friends Sebastian designed new primers which are much much better than the CDC or other primers used in this video. Here are their sequences for those interested and if you'd like, check out Sebastian's work here: http://binomicalabs.org/

SpikeF - AGGAATTTTTATGAACCACAAATCA

MembraneR - CGGTGATCCAATTTATTCTGTAAAC

NucleoF - AAATGAAAGATCTCAGTCCAAGATG

NucleoR - ACAGTTTGCTGTTTCTTCTGTCTCT

Original Primers:

N1F - GACCCCAAAATCAGCGAAAT

N2F - ttacaaacattggccgcaaa

N3F - GGGAGCCTTGAATACACCAAAA

N2R - GCGCGACATTCCGAAGAA

N2-LF - gggggcaaattgtgcaatttg

N2-B3 - gacttgatctttgaaatttggatct

N2-F3 - accaggaactaatcagacaag