At Octant, we have built, optimized, and routinely run at scale a high-throughput RNA-amplicon sequencing platform we use for our multiplexed approaches. In particular, we've optimized this process to be sensitive to low numbers of RNA molecules, to be low touch, and cost-effective. Over the last several weeks, we’ve repurposed this platform for COVID-19 detection. We call it SwabSeq. We decided to do this because the methodology avoids certain bottlenecks in the testing processing, including RNA purification, qPCR machinery and automation. We have made SwabSeq freely available under the Open COVID License, publishing our protocols, software, notebooks, designs, as well as the primers and controls necessary to enable SwabSeq anywhere. A number of groups, companies and academic institutions have already replicated the protocol.
Our original open-sourced protocol and data can be found on the Octant SwabSeq Notion Page. Code can be found on the Octant SwabSeq GitHub Page.
More recent information can be found in below or on the COVID Scaleup Slack: