Preliminary in silico assessment of the specificity of published molecular assays and design of new assays using the available whole genome sequences of 2019-nCoV

Updated to 66,862 COVID-19 WGS from GISAID.

Table 1. Results from PSET analysis. The five Noblis assays were compared alongside the four assays from Corman and three assays from the CDC. Along with assays from China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, France, South Korea, and Singapore. Each assay was tested using SARS-CoV-2 as the intended target. All off-target hits (TN, PF, FP) are to entries in NCBI BLAST databases (nt and env_nt).

identifier type PT TP FN Percent True PF FP TN
Noblis.12 Probe 66251 294 317 99.53% 0 0 680
Noblis.40 Probe 64912 1767 183 99.73% 0 1 1420
Noblis.42 Probe 66354 168 340 99.49% 0 2 1136
Noblis.44 Probe 65850 320 692 98.97% 0 1 1786
Noblis.57 Probe 65576 649 637 99.05% 0 1 853
ncov_e_gene Probe 66264 207 391 99.42% 361 15 53
ncov_n_gene Probe 65616 833 413 99.38% 0 340 72
ncov_rdrp_1 Probe 0 66649 213 99.68% 433 105 5967
ncov_rdrp_2 Probe 4 66661 197 99.71% 2 73 5916
cdc_n1 Probe 64689 2008 165 99.75% 0 2 381
cdc_n2 Probe 65479 547 836 98.75% 0 1 372
cdc_n3 Probe 65653 955 254 99.62% 1 353 36
China_N Probe 44961 938 20963 68.65% 0 2 691
China_ORF1ab Probe 63933 505 2424 96.37% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP2 Probe 66352 262 248 99.63% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP4 Probe 66287 432 143 99.79% 0 0 1190
HKU-N Probe 65338 695 829 98.76% 327 33 34
HKU-ORF1b-nsp14 Probe 66183 465 214 99.68% 324 29 452
Japan_NIID_2019-nCOV_N Probe 0 65999 863 98.71% 0 0 384
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F24381 Outer 65482 995 385 99.42% 0 1 601
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F501 Outer 65425 962 475 99.29% 0 1 370
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F509 Outer 65511 783 568 99.15% 1 0 369
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F24383 Outer 65455 1009 398 99.40% 0 0 606
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F519 Outer 65280 665 917 98.63% 0 1 369
Japan_WuhanCoV-spk1 Outer 65594 873 395 99.41% 1 1 594
Thailand_WH-NIC_N Probe 65891 793 178 99.73% 0 2 375
Chan-N Probe 65579 455 828 98.76% 4 3 353
Chan-ORF1ab Probe 0 66049 813 98.78% 0 5 2
Chan-S Probe 65395 254 1213 98.19% 5 0 2
Niu-E Probe 66120 309 433 99.35% 26 359 0
Won-E Outer 2 66514 346 99.48% 0 384 1
Won-N Outer 64929 1572 361 99.46% 8 7 358
Won-ORF1ab Outer 66276 323 263 99.61% 5 2 313
Won-S Outer 64167 220 2475 96.30% 5 1 0
Yip-ORF1ab Outer 65785 325 752 98.88% 5 1 1
Young-N Probe 0 66540 322 99.52% 0 5 1
Young-ORF1ab Probe 66479 228 155 99.77% 5 1 0
Young-S Probe 65727 657 478 99.29% 4 1 0