Synthetic Biology Construct of Ebola Virus in Bacteria Surrogate Is Stable and Safe for Rapid Detection Studies in a BSL-2 Laboratory Setting

Abstract

Rapid detection of virulent pathogens during an outbreak is critical for public health advisories and control of the disease in a population. While many molecular techniques for point of care and clinical diagnosis abound, the US experience with the COVID-19 testing in the early stages of the pandemic underscores the critical importance of determining the appropriate target gene(s) with in-built controls that reliably detect pathogens with high sensitivity and specificity. Assays and research for diagnostics and therapy could be slowed during an epidemic because access to the required BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories are limited. So, during the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, we tested the hypothesis that using synthetic cDNA of Ebolavirus in a bacteria surrogate (fit for all lab settings), would remain unmutated and safe after several generations, serving as an effective positive control in research settings, self test and point-of-care detection platforms. Primers were designed for the detection and quantification of the nucleoprotein (NP) gene of the 2014 Makona Ebola strain (KR781608.1, 733 - 1332 bp). To test the stability of artificially inserted translation arrest in the Orf of the model gene, it was edited to include three STOP codons in the RNA transcript using SNAP GENE. The segment was then spliced into a high copy number plasmid, cloned into One ShotTM TOP10 Escherichia coli (Invitrogen), and tested for stability and safety by periodic subculture, extraction and sequencing. Unlike COVID-19, rapid detection of blood-borne etiologies like Ebola requires optimized protocols for blood matrix. Using real-time PCR and newly designed primer pairs, the EBOV surrogate was detected and enumerated in human blood and regular broth and buffers. Based on aligned sequence analysis, the EBOV synthetic NP gene was stable (>99.9999% similarity coefficient) for at least 3 months. Detection sensitivity in broth and blood was at least 100 cells/ml or about 5.8 × 103 to 7.3 × 103 virion equivalents per ml. While the developments of transcription-and-replication-competent virus like particles (trVLP) have made it possible to study the infection and replication cycles of virulent pathogens in BSL-2 laboratories, the simplicity of our model and the reproducibility of detection and enumeration show the utility of synthetic bio-components as positive controls for point of care diagnostic tools. The inserted stop codons remained intact after many generations, suggesting that expressed virulent proteins can be easily silenced in synthetic biology models for research in BSL-1 and 2 and a wide range of pathogens. Synthetic bio-components can thereby aid further research by reducing costs and improving safety for workers and stakeholders.