Global health and food security constantly face the challenge of emerging human and plant diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other pathogens. Disease outbreaks such as SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Ebola, and COVID-19 (on-going) have caused suffering, death, and economic losses worldwide. To prevent the spread of disease and protect human populations, rapid point-of-care (POC) molecular diagnosis of human and plant diseases play an increasingly crucial role. Nucleic acid-based molecular diagnosis reveals valuable information at the genomic level about the identity of the disease-causing pathogens and their pathogenesis, which help researchers, healthcare professionals, and patients to detect the presence of pathogens, track the spread of disease, and guide treatment more efficiently. A typical nucleic acid-based diagnostic test consists of three major steps: nucleic acid extraction, amplification, and amplicon detection. Among these steps, nucleic acid extraction is the first step of sample preparation, which remains one of the main challenges when converting laboratory molecular assays into POC tests. Sample preparation from human and plant specimens is a time-consuming and multi-step process, which requires well-equipped laboratories and skilled lab personnel. To perform rapid molecular diagnosis in resource-limited settings, simpler and instrument-free nucleic acid extraction techniques are required to improve the speed of field detection with minimal human intervention. This review summarizes the recent advances in POC nucleic acid extraction technologies. In particular, this review focuses on novel devices or methods that have demonstrated applicability and robustness for the isolation of high-quality nucleic acid from complex raw samples, such as human blood, saliva, sputum, nasal swabs, urine, and plant tissues. The integration of these rapid nucleic acid preparation methods with miniaturized assay and sensor technologies would pave the road for the “sample-in-result-out” diagnosis of human and plant diseases, especially in remote or resource-limited settings.

全球健康和粮食安全不断面临由细菌、病毒、真菌和其他病原体引起的新出现的人类和植物疾病的挑战。SARS、MERS、猪流感、埃博拉和 COVID-19（正在进行）等疾病爆发在全世界范围内造成了痛苦、死亡和经济损失。为了防止疾病传播和保护人群，人类和植物疾病的快速护理点 (POC) 分子诊断发挥着越来越重要的作用。基于核酸的分子诊断在基因组水平上揭示了有关致病病原体及其发病机制的有价值的信息，这有助于研究人员、医疗保健专业人员和患者检测病原体的存在、跟踪疾病的传播并指导治疗更有效。典型的基于核酸的诊断测试包括三个主要步骤：核酸提取、扩增和扩增子检测。其中，核酸提取是样品制备的第一步，这仍然是将实验室分子检测转化为POC测试的主要挑战之一。人类和植物标本的样品制备是一个耗时且多步骤的过程，需要设备精良的实验室和熟练的实验室人员。为了在资源有限的环境中进行快速分子诊断，需要更简单且无需仪器的核酸提取技术，以在最少的人为干预下提高现场检测的速度。本文综述了POC核酸提取技术的最新进展。特别是，本次综述重点关注已证明从复杂原始样本（例如人类血液、唾液、痰、鼻拭子、尿液和植物组织）中分离高质量核酸的适用性和稳健性的新型设备或方法。这些快速核酸制备方法与小型化测定和传感器技术的集成将为人类和植物疾病的“样本输入结果”诊断铺平道路，特别是在偏远或资源有限的环境中。