Homebrew: Protocol for glassmilk-based nucleic-acid extraction for SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics
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Updated: Sep 25, 2025

Swabbing the Urban Environment - A Pipeline for Sampling and Detection of SARS-CoV-2 From Environmental Reservoirs
Published on: April 9, 2021
Robert Page1, Edward Scourfield2, Mattia Ficarelli2
1ImmunoEngineering Lab, School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences, King's College London, Guy's Cancer Centre, Great Maze Pond, London SE1 9RT, UK.
Abstract:
The gold standard protocol for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection detection remains reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), which detects viral RNA more sensitively than any other approach. Here, we present Homebrew, a low-cost protocol to extract RNA using widely available reagents. Homebrew is as sensitive as commercially available RNA extraction kits. Homebrew allows for sample pooling and can be adapted for automation in high-throughput settings. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Page et al. (2022).

