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 507,323 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 494230 11101 1992 99.61% 0 0 680
Noblis.40 499141 6954 1228 99.76% 0 1 1420
Noblis.42 501587 3845 1891 99.63% 0 2 1136
Noblis.44 499889 4450 2984 99.41% 0 1 1786
Noblis.57 495554 5690 6079 98.80% 0 1 853
ncov_e_gene 502382 1902 3039 99.40% 361 15 53
ncov_n_gene 488006 14617 4700 99.07% 0 340 72
ncov_rdrp_1 0 504677 2646 99.48% 433 105 5967
ncov_rdrp_2 16 504957 2350 99.54% 2 73 5916
cdc_n1 488471 17396 1456 99.71% 0 2 381
cdc_n2 488978 14940 3405 99.33% 0 1 372
cdc_n3 488204 17106 2013 99.60% 1 353 36
China_N 279059 31342 196922 61.18% 0 2 691
China_ORF1ab 492603 4055 10665 97.90% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP2 500117 3999 3207 99.37% 1 0 367
France_nCoV_IP4 498969 7209 1145 99.77% 0 0 1190
HKU-N 491804 11889 3630 99.28% 327 33 34
HKU-ORF1b-nsp14 501877 4181 1265 99.75% 324 29 452
Japan_NIID_2019-nCOV_N 0 503471 3852 99.24% 0 0 384
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F24381 496921 6295 4107 99.19% 0 1 601
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F501 499044 5044 3235 99.36% 0 1 370
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F509 494915 8978 3430 99.32% 1 0 369
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F24383 496682 6491 4150 99.18% 0 0 606
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F519 494624 6040 6659 98.69% 0 1 369
Japan_WuhanCoV-spk1 498900 4290 4133 99.19% 1 1 594
Thailand_WH-NIC_N 495941 9848 1534 99.70% 0 2 375
Chan-N 489511 14036 3776 99.26% 4 3 353
Chan-ORF1ab 6 501750 5567 98.90% 0 5 2
Chan-S 495106 4758 7459 98.53% 5 0 2
Niu-E 498719 5429 3175 99.37% 26 359 0
Won-E 7 504559 2757 99.46% 0 384 1
Won-N 492335 10637 4351 99.14% 8 7 358
Won-ORF1ab 502141 2742 2440 99.52% 5 2 313
Won-S 487318 3020 16985 96.65% 5 1 0
Yip-ORF1ab 498221 3849 5253 98.96% 5 1 1
Young-N 1 505333 1989 99.61% 0 5 1
Young-ORF1ab 496665 8997 1661 99.67% 5 1 0
Young-S 411307 16905 79111 84.41% 4 1 0
C1_COV_ORF1a 485703 7396 14224 97.20% 0 0 0
C2_COV_ORF1b 492279 12891 2153 99.58% 0 0 0
C3_COV_ORF3a 450634 41962 14727 97.10% 0 0 0
C4_COV_ORF8 417307 81555 8461 98.33% 0 0 0
C5_COV_S_gene 496985 6416 3922 99.23% 0 0 0