Patent ID: 7491493

Claim:
A method of detecting and identifying an orthopoxvirus within a sample comprising: adding to the sample reagents for nucleic acid amplification and at least one pair of primers capable of amplifying at least one region of the orthopoxvirus genome, said pair of primers being selected from the group consisting of 12 or more consecutive nucleotides of ATGCCGGTACTTATGTATGTGC (SPOXHA5, SEQ ID NO: 1) and 12 or more consecutive nucleotides of TCTTGTCTGTTGTGGATTCT (SPOXHA3, SEQ ID NO: 2) when said region of the orthopoxvirus genome is gene HA; and 12 or more consecutive nucleotides of TACCGGTCTCAGCGAATC (SPOXcrmB5, SEQ ID NO: 3) and 12 or more consecutive nucleotides of ACCGTCTCCGAATGCGGCAT (SPOXcrmB3, SEQ ID NO: 4) when said region of the orthopoxvirus genome is gene crmB; incubating the sample under conditions suitable for nucleic acid amplification thereby producing an amplicon if the sample contains orthopoxvirus; adding at least one restriction enzyme selected from the group consisting of: Sau 3AI, Spe I, Dra I, Hpa I, Ssp I, Alw 44I, Nla III, and combinations thereof; and determining if restriction enzyme digestion of an amplicon has occurred.