A sensitive and specific hyperbranched rolling circle amplification assay and test strip for white spot syndrome virus.

White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is a global threat to the prawn industry, and there is no simple method for field-based testing of this virus. We designed a padlock probe and primers to the capsid protein gene VP28 of WSSV, and established a hyperbranched rolling circle amplification (HRCA) assay and a corresponding strip-based test. The assay and the test strip both had similar high accuracy and specificity, and their sensitivity was about 10 copies/μL, which is 100 times higher than conventional PCR.