Extended Data Fig. 2. No effect of different concentrations of RdRp-SARSr primers and probes on analytical sensitivity.
Low performance of the standardized RdRp-SARSr primer-probe set triggered us to further investigate the effect of primer concentrations. We compared our standardized primer-probe concentrations (500 nM of forward and reverse primers, and 250 nM of probe) with the recommended concentrations in the confirmatory assay (600 nM of forward primer, 800 nM of reverse primer, 100 nM of probe 1, and 100 nM of probe 2), and the discriminatory assay (600 nM of forward primer, 800 nM of reverse primer, and 200 nM of probe 2) as developed by the Charité Institute of Virology Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Standard curves for both RdRp-transcript standard and full-length SARS-CoV-2 RNA are similar, which indicates that higher primer concentrations did not improve the performance of the RdRp-SARSr set. Symbol indicates tested sample type (circles = RdRp transcript standard, and squares = full-length SARS-CoV-2 RNA from cell culture) and colors indicate the different primer and probe concentrations. Data used to make this figure can be found in Source Data Extended Data Fig 2.