Patent ID: 7615352
Filing Date: 2009-11-10
Classification: C12Q

Abstract:
1. A method for detecting the presence or absence of Epstein Barr virus (EBV) in a biological sample from an individual or in a non-biological sample, said method comprising: performing at least one cycling step, wherein a cycling step comprises an amplifying step and a hybridization step, said amplifying step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of latent membrane protein (lmp) primers to produce a lmp amplification product if an EBV lmp nucleic acid molecule is present in said sample, wherein said pair of lmp primers comprises a first lmp primer and a second lmp primer, wherein said first lmp primer consists of sequence 5′-ATG AGG AAC GTG AAT CTA ATG A-3′ (SEQ ID NO. 1), and said second lmp primer consists of the sequence 5′-TAC AGA TAG ATG GCA CTC TTA CC-3′ (SEQ ID NO. 2), wherein said hybridization step comprises contacting said amplification product with a pair of lmp probes comprising a first lmp probe and a second lmp probe, wherein said first lmp probe comprises the sequence 5′-CTA CTC TCC ACG GGA TGA CTC ATC TCA ACA CA-3′(SEQ ID NO. 3), and the second lmp probe comprises the sequence 5′GAA GAA GCG GGC AGA GG-3′ (SEQ ID NO. 4), wherein said pair of lmp probes hybridize to said amplification product adjacent to each other within no more than five nucleotides apart, wherein said first lmp probe is labeled with a donor fluorescent moiety and said second lmp probe is labeled with a corresponding acceptor fluorescent moiety; and detecting the presence or absence of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between said donor fluorescent moiety of said first lmp probe and said acceptor fluorescent moiety of said second lmp probe, wherein the presence of FRET is indicative of the presence of EBV in said sample, and the absence of FRET is indicative of the absence of EBV in said sample.