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 1,081,736 high coverage COVID-19 WGS from GISAID using BLASTDB version 5.

Run Date: 05/7/2021

Table 1. PSET analysis using SARS-CoV-2 as the intended target. Perfect True Positive (PT), True Positive (TP), and False Negative (FN) counts for various assays were produced in each run. The five Noblis assays were compared alongside with assays produced in the US including the Corman (four assays) and CDC (three assays) brands. Assays originating from China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, France, South Korea, and Singapore were also used in this comparison. Algorithms were set to penalize Ns on the subject sequence. Internal improvement to the PSET algorithms and snakemake (Snakemake — Snakemake 6.2.1 documentation) pipeline implementations decreased the Type I and Type II error rates compared with previous versions. We no longer calculate off-target hits due to the continued stability of these values.

Assay PT TP FN Percent True
Noblis.12 1055483 21103 220 99.98%
Noblis.40 1054779 22150 92 99.99%
Noblis.42 1066452 10448 25 100.00%
Noblis.44 1065821 10982 36 100.00%
Noblis.57 1062626 15899 103 99.99%
ncov_e_gene 1072331 4201 216 99.98%
ncov_n_gene 1048853 27418 152 99.99%
ncov_rdrp_1 0 1075806 1172 99.89%
ncov_rdrp_2 31 1076322 635 99.94%
cdc_n1 1038877 37797 12 100.00%
cdc_n2 1038361 37699 76 99.99%
cdc_n3 1036012 40716 16 100.00%
China_N 358119 106799 609811 43.26%
China_ORF1ab 1067798 8839 160 99.99%
France_nCoV_IP2 1058123 18653 90 99.99%
France_nCoV_IP4 1018659 58223 148 99.99%
HKU-N 1048396 27363 69 99.99%
HKU-ORF1b-nsp14 1067524 9406 64 99.99%
Japan_NIID_2019-nCOV_N 2 1075641 204 99.98%
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F24381 1062677 15456 234 99.98%
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F501 1063930 12551 75 99.99%
Japan_NIID_WH-1_F509 1053255 23074 242 99.98%
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F24383 1062389 14339 1659 99.85%
Japan_NIID_WH-1_Seq_F519 1050519 16955 9112 99.15%
Japan_WuhanCoV-spk1 1067642 10481 205 99.98%
Thailand_WH-NIC_N 1057475 19183 71 99.99%
Chan-N 1045151 30480 151 99.99%
Chan-ORF1ab 41 1076321 73 100.00%
Chan-S 1048072 27596 417 99.96%
Niu-E 1065378 11145 229 99.98%
Won-E 5 1076580 157 99.99%
Won-N 1052374 23961 23 100.00%
Won-ORF1ab 1068015 8946 12 100.00%
Won-S 1065942 8601 721 99.93%
Yip-ORF1ab 1066864 9538 63 99.99%
Young-N 1 1076761 48 100.00%
Young-ORF1ab 1061627 15000 358 99.97%
Young-S 563864 44899 461606 56.87%
C1_COV_ORF1a 1053672 18772 176 99.98%
C2_COV_ORF1b 1047179 29732 19 100.00%
C3_COV_ORF3a 953272 121543 346 99.97%
C4_COV_ORF8 589965 483426 1713 99.84%
C5_COV_S_gene 1063209 15402 84 99.99%