An economical and sensitive glassmilk-based nucleic-acid extraction approach for SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics

The gold standard protocol for SARS-CoV-2 infection detection remains reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), 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. • Homebrew is as sensitive as commercial RNA extraction kits for SARS-CoV-2 testing; • Homebrew only requires glassmilk, SDS, NaCl, isopropanol, ethanol and water; • Cost- and time- effective compared with other RNA extraction techniques • Homebrew allows for pooling of samples without loss of sensitivity.