Patent ID: 8450058

Claim:
A method of detecting a target substance, comprising: contacting the target substance with an assist probe and a plurality of pairs of dimer-forming probes, and detecting a signal probe polymer formed of the plurality of pairs of dimer-forming probes, the assist probe and the target substance, wherein the detection of said signal probe polymer indicates the presence of said target substsance in a sample, wherein: the plurality of pairs of dimer-forming probes comprise at least a first pair of dimer- forming probes and a second pair of dimer-forming probes, each dimer-forming probe of the first pair of dimer-forming probes, and each dimer-forming probe of the second pair of dimer-forming probes, comprises a 5′-side region, a central region, and a 3′-side region, the central regions of the dimer-forming probes of the first pair of dimer-forming probes are complementary to each other, and the central regions of the dimer-forming probes of the second pair of dimer-forming probes are complementary to each other, the 3′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the first pair of dimer-forming probes are different from each other and not complementary to the opposing 5′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the first pair of dimer-forming probes, the 3′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the second pair of dimer-forming probes are different from each other and not complementary to the opposing 5′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the second pair of dimer-forming probes, the 5′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the first pair of dimer-forming probes are complementary to the 5′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the second pair of dimer-forming probes, the 3′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the first pair of dimer-forming probes are complementary to the 3′-side regions of the dimer-forming probes of the second pair of dimer-forming probes, the assist probe has a region complementary to a 5′-side region of a dimer-forming probe of the first pair of dimer-forming probes, a region complementary to an opposing 3′-side region of the dimer-forming probe of the first pair of dimer-forming probes, and a target region capable of binding to the target substance, and the target substance, assist probe and the plurality of pairs of dimer-forming probes are nucleic acids.