[Recent advances in clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-based detection of severe acute...

The rapid global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has introduced various challenges in global public health systems. The poor applicability and sensitivity of the reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and antigen-based tests, as well as the persistent emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with different mutations hinder satisfactory epidemic prevention and control. Therefore, there is an urgent need for diagnostic technologies capable of distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 variants with high sensitivity and low (or no) equipment dependence. Diagnosis based on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) has low equipment requirements and is programmable, sensitive, and easy to use. Various nucleic acid detection tools with great clinical potential have been developed for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Therefore, this review focuses on the reported state-of-the-art CRISPR diagnostic technologies developed for the detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 variants, summarizes their characteristics and provides an outlook for their development.