Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy investigation of SARS-CoV-2 ssRNA.

The break-out of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2019 led to a major health crisis that affected the entire world and revealed a gap in the scientific knowledge about pandemic management. SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the Coronaviridae family, a species related to severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS-CoV-2’s genome is a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome (+ssRNA) and contains the information to produce viral proteins [1]. In addition to its ability to encode proteins, the SARS-CoV-2 RNA has higher-order RNA structures that act by regulating many steps in the viral life cycle, such as genome replication, viral protein translation, RNA transcription, and nucleocapsid formation. The aforementioned highlights that a detailed investigation of RNA secondary structures, and thus its functional impact, could be a step forward in understanding the biological and molecular processes involved in viral propagation [2]. In this work, we report the spectral characterization in the infrared (IR) region of an 880-nucleotide synthetic ssRNA containing the target regions of the genes encoding the main structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2. Through Fourier Transform IR (FTIR) spectroscopy measurements, a unique fingerprint of SARS-CoV-2 ssRNA fragment is obtained, providing a potential, promising starting point for sensing application.