What do you know about virus sampling tubes? See if the following is the same as what you know
What is virus preservation fluid? When is virus preservation fluid needed?
Virus Preservation Solution is a protective liquid medium added to virus sampling tubes to protect samples after nasopharyngeal swabs are taken. Usually for nucleic acid testing, the sample collection site cannot directly perform nucleic acid PCR and the swab sample needs to be transferred for testing, so virus preservation fluid is added.
Why use virus sampling tubes?
First of all, we need to understand what is a virus? Why do we need virus tubes?
A virus is a non-cellular form composed of nucleic acid molecules and proteins that live on a parasitic host, an organic species between living and non-living organisms. It is a DNA or RNA wrapped in a protective shell. Through the mechanism of infection, these simple organisms can use the host's cellular system to replicate themselves, but are unable to grow and replicate independently. Viruses can infect almost any living organism with a cellular structure.
Virus detection differs from conventional biochemical assays in that the virus itself is a structurally simple microorganism that must be parasitized within a living cell. After sampling, the virus leaves the host cell, and its protein shell and nucleic acids are quickly degraded within the sampling tube, so that nucleic acid detection is unable to determine whether the initially collected sample contains a virus, easily resulting in a false negative.
There are two types of virus preservation solutions: inactivated and non-inactivated.
Inactivated virus preservation solution is mainly a modified virus lysis solution with a high concentration of lysis salts, which can rapidly and efficiently inactivate the viral proteins in the sample to be tested and effectively prevent infection, while containing Rnase inhibitors to protect the viral nucleic acids from degradation. The diagnosis can be made as soon as the nucleic acid of the virus is detected in the subsequent NT-PCR test. It can be stored at room temperature for a relatively long time.
The non-inactivating preservation solution is mainly a modified virus maintenance solution based on the transport medium. It can preserve both the protein shell of the virus and the viral nucleic acid DNA or RNA, so that the virus has the protein antigen epitope and nucleic acid integrity in vitro, but of course there is a certain risk of infectivity in case of mishandling. Prolonged post-sampling storage requires strict hypothermia.
Regardless of the type of virus preservation solution, we need to test as soon as possible after sampling or strict cryopreservation to ensure that the test is accurate. Because of the rapid reproduction and mutation of viruses, virus preservation solution plays a vital role in maintaining the stability of virus samples.
