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 466,524 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). *edited 2/2 to include 5 additional assays.

Assay PT TP FN Percent True PF FP TN
Noblis.12 454125 10499 1900 99.59% 0 0 680
Noblis.40 458704 6644 1176 99.75% 0 1 1420
Noblis.42 461350 3393 1781 99.62% 0 2 1136
Noblis.44 459680 4097 2747 99.41% 0 1 1786
Noblis.57 455564 5232 5728 98.77% 0 1 853
ncov_e_gene 461926 1752 2846 99.39% 361 15 53
ncov_n_gene 448606 13640 4278 99.08% 0 340 72
ncov_rdrp_1 0 464006 2518 99.46% 433 105 5967
ncov_rdrp_2 16 464254 2254 99.52% 2 73 5916
cdc_n1 449212 15919 1393 99.70% 0 2 381
cdc_n2 449423 13796 3305 99.29% 0 1 372
cdc_n3 448548 16074 1902 99.59% 1 353 36
China_N 263858 28328 174338 62.63% 0 2 691
China_ORF1ab 452935 3603 9986 97.86% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP2 460117 3537 2870 99.38% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP4 459488 5955 1081 99.77% 0 0 1190
HKU-N 452261 10734 3529 99.24% 327 33 34
HKU-ORF1b-nsp14 461355 3951 1218 99.74% 324 29 452
Japan_NIID_2019-nCOV_N 0 462783 3741 99.20% 0 0 384
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F24381 456883 5750 3891 99.17% 0 1 601
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F501 458829 4663 3032 99.35% 0 1 370
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F509 455000 8305 3219 99.31% 1 0 369
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F24383 456677 5914 3933 99.16% 0 0 606
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F519 454746 5480 6298 98.65% 0 1 369
Japan_WuhanCoV-spk1 458563 4051 3910 99.16% 1 1 594
Thailand_WH-NIC_N 456149 8902 1473 99.68% 0 2 375
Chan-N 449760 13098 3666 99.21% 4 3 353
Chan-ORF1ab 5 461374 5145 98.90% 0 5 2
Chan-S 455718 3978 6828 98.54% 5 0 2
Niu-E 458497 5053 2974 99.36% 26 359 0
Won-E 7 463939 2578 99.45% 0 384 1
Won-N 452543 10040 3941 99.16% 8 7 358
Won-ORF1ab 461759 2445 2320 99.50% 5 2 313
Won-S 447723 2713 16088 96.55% 5 1 0
Yip-ORF1ab 458076 3477 4971 98.93% 5 1 1
Young-N 1 464658 1865 99.60% 0 5 1
Young-ORF1ab 456396 8564 1564 99.66% 5 1 0
Young-S 392575 15258 58691 87.42% 4 1 0
C1_COV_ORF1a 447079 6777 12668 97.28% 0 0 0
C2_COV_ORF1b 452758 11713 2053 99.56% 0 0 0
C3_COV_ORF3a 415896 37202 13426 97.12% 0 0 0
C4_COV_ORF8 397705 60858 7961 98.29% 0 0 0
C5_COV_S_gene 457226 5598 3700 99.21% 0 0 0