Patent ID: 7534566

Claim:
A method of detecting a presence of a target nucleic acid in a sample comprising the steps of: (i) conducting a polymerase chain reaction in a solution so as to amplify said target nucleic acid; (ii) hybridizing an amplified product resulting from said step (i) with a probe which specifically hybridizes with an amplicon of said target nucleic acid; and (iii) detecting a signal from said probe resulting from said step (ii), said signal originating from a label incorporated in said target nucleic acid, wherein said solution comprises a deoxynucleotide mixture consisting of: (a) dATP, dCTP, dGTP and dTTP; or (b) dATP, dCTP, dGTP, dTTP and dUTP, wherein, in the mixture described in (a), one type of deoxynucleotide chosen from the mixture comprises a labeled deoxynucleotide and a non-labeled deoxynucleotide, wherein, in the mixture described in (b), dUTP comprises a labeled deoxynucleotide and dTTP comprises a non-labeled deoxynucleotide, wherein the molar ratio of the labeled deoxynucleotide to the non-labeled deoxynucleotide is 1 or greater, and wherein the total concentration of the labeled deoxynucleotide and the non-labeled deoxynucleotide in the solution is lower than that of any other deoxynucleotide in the solution.