介绍： The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China this January saw people suffering from fever, cough, shortness of breath and even severe pneumonia. But these are only symptoms which could be caused by other diseases. How do we test for a virus that we haven't seen before?

You might have come across this term ...

介绍： The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China this January saw people suffering from fever, cough, shortness of breath and even severe pneumonia. But these are only symptoms which could be caused by other diseases. How do we test for a virus that we haven't seen before?

You might have come across this term a lot recently: nucleic acid test. As one can tell from the name, it is about testing the presence of the virus's genetic material, the RNA or DNA.

Medical personnel first take a sample from the suspected patient, usually a throat swab, to test for coronavirus.

We know that the genetic material of the new coronavirus is RNA. But most of our tools for this test are specific to DNA. So scientists need to take virus's RNA as a template, create a complementary strand and make a DNA copy of it. This process is called "reverse transcription."