Sensitive and Specific Detection of Lumpy Skin Disease Virus in Cattle by CRISPR-Cas12a Fluorescent Assay Coupled with Recombinase Polymerase Amplification

Abstract

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a severe and highly infectious pox disease of cattle caused by the lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV). To facilitate early control of LSD, this study aimed to develop a new rapid on-site LSDV detection method using an <i>orf068</i> gene-based recombinase polymerase amplification assay (RPA) coupled with a CRISPR-Cas12a-based fluorescence assay (RPA-Cas12a-fluorescence assay). The results showed that the sensitivity of our RPA-Cas12a-fluorescence assay for detecting LSDV <i>orf068</i> gene reached 5 copies/μL with plasmid as a template, and 10² TCID₅₀/mL with viral genomic DNA as a template. No cross-reaction with other common bovine viruses was observed. Further, an on-site RPA-Cas12a-fluorescence assay of 40 clinical samples from cattle with or without LSD showed a diagnostic sensitivity of 96.3% (95% CI: 81.0-99.9%) and specificity of 92.31% (95% CI: 62.1-99.6%), which was close to those of the quantitative PCR assay. Therefore, our RPA-Cas12a-fluorescence assay has promising prospects in on-site rapid LSDV detection.