Patent ID: 8426137

Claim:
A method for testing for the presence of a vancomycin resistance gene in a sample, comprising: providing said sample; contacting said sample with an amplification primer pair that hybridizes to and is capable of amplifying sequences from a vanB gene under conditions that enable nucleic acid amplification to generate a vanB amplicon if said sample comprises a pathogen comprising said vanB gene, wherein said amplification primer pair comprises an oligonucleotide consisting of SEQ ID NO: 1096 or the complement thereof, or variants of SEQ ID NO: 1096, wherein said variants optionally have up to three nucleotide changes compared to SEQ ID NO: 1096, wherein said variants are capable of hybridizing to and amplifying nucleic acids from a vanB gene in a nucleic acid amplification assay; and determining whether or not said vanB amplicon is present wherein the presence of a vanB amplicon is indicative of the presence of a vancomycin resistance gene in the sample, thereby testing for the presence of a vancomycin resistance gene in a sample.