Design and application of 60mer oligonucleotide microarray in SARS coronavirus detection

The 60mer oligonucleotide microarray was designed and applied to detecting of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus. Thirty 60mer specific oligos were designed to cover the whole genome of the first submitted coronavirus strain, according to the sequence of TOR2 (GENEBANK Accession: AY274119). These primers were synthesized and printed into a microarray with 12 ×12 spots. RNAs were extracted from the throat swab and gargling fluid of SARS patients and reverse-transcripted into the double strand cDNAs. The cDNAs were prepared as restricted cDNA fragments by the restriction display (RD) technique and labeled by PCR with the Cy5-universal primer. The labeled samples were then applied to the oligo microarray for hybridization. The diagnostic capability of the microarray was evaluated after the washing and scanning steps. The scanning result showed that samples of SARS patients were hybridized with multiple SARS probes on the microarray, and there is no signal on the negative and blank controls. These results indicate that the genome of SARS coronavirus can be detected in parallel by the 60mer oligonucleotide microarray, which can improve the positive ratio of the diagnosis. The oligo microarray can also be used for monitoring the behavior of the virus genes in different stages of the disease status.