Molecular diagnosis and surveillance of pathogens such as SARS‐CoV‐2 depend on nucleic acid isolation. Pandemics at the scale of COVID‐19 can cause a global shortage of proprietary commercial reagents and BSL‐2 laboratories to safely perform testing. Therefore, alternative solutions are urgently needed to address these challenges. An open‐source method, magnetic‐nanoparticle‐aided viral RNA isolation from contagious samples (MAVRICS), built upon readily available reagents, and easily assembled in any basically equipped laboratory, is thus developed. The performance of MAVRICS is evaluated using validated pathogen detection assays and real‐world and contrived samples. Unlike conventional methods, MAVRICS works directly in samples inactivated in phenol‐chloroform (e.g., TRIzol), thus allowing infectious samples to be handled safely without biocontainment facilities. MAVRICS allows wastewater biomass immobilized on membranes to be directly inactivated and lysed in TRIzol followed by RNA extraction by magnetic nanoparticles, thereby greatly reducing biohazard risk and simplifying processing procedures. Using 39 COVID‐19 patient samples and two wastewater samples, it is shown that MAVRICS rivals commercial kits in detection of SARS‐CoV‐2, influenza viruses, and respiratory syncytial virus. Therefore, MAVRICS is safe, fast, and scalable. It is field‐deployable with minimal equipment requirements and could become an enabling technology for widespread testing and wastewater monitoring of diverse pathogens.

中文翻译：

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用于从临床和废水样品中提取病原体 RNA 的稳健、安全且可扩展的磁性纳米颗粒工作流程

SARS-CoV-2 等病原体的分子诊断和监测依赖于核酸分离。COVID-19 规模的流行病可能会导致全球缺乏专有的商业试剂和 BSL-2 实验室来安全地进行检测。因此，迫切需要替代解决方案来应对这些挑战。因此开发了一种开源方法，即磁性纳米粒子辅助从传染性样本中分离病毒RNA ( MAVRICS)，该方法基于现成的试剂，并且可以在任何基本配备的实验室中轻松组装。使用经过验证的病原体检测分析以及真实世界和人为样本来评估 MAVRICS 的性能。与传统方法不同，MAVRICS 直接在酚氯仿（例如 TRIzol）中灭活的样品中起作用，因此无需生物防护设施即可安全处理感染性样品。MAVRICS允许固定在膜上的废水生物质直接在TRIzol中灭活和裂解，然后通过磁性纳米粒子提取RNA，从而大大降低生物危害风险并简化处理程序。使用 39 个 COVID-19 患者样本和两个废水样本，结果表明 MAVRICS 在检测 SARS-CoV-2、流感病毒和呼吸道合胞病毒方面可与商业试剂盒相媲美。因此，MAVRICS 安全、快速且可扩展。它可以现场部署，设备要求极低，并且可以成为对多种病原体进行广泛测试和废水监测的支持技术。