Patent ID: 8076063

Claim:
A method for multiplex detection of methylation in a population of double-stranded target nucleic acids comprising: (a) providing a population of double-stranded target nucleic acids labeled with a purification tag, wherein said target nucleic acids comprise potentially methylated target sequences; (b) cleaving said population of target nucleic acids with an enzyme, whereby said enzyme selectively cleaves at unmethylated target sequences in said population of target nucleic acids and does not cleave at methylated target sequences in said population of target nucleic acids, forming a population of cleaved target nucleic acids labeled with a purification tag and a population of non-cleaved target nucleic acids labeled with a purification tag; (c) immobilizing said population of non-cleaved said target nucleic acids by said purification tag, thereby forming immobilized non-cleaved target nucleic acids; and (d) detecting the presence of said immobilized non-cleaved target nucleic acids wherein said detecting step comprises: contacting said immobilized non-cleaved target nucleic acids with a composition comprising a plurality of different target probes, each of said probes comprising: a first region complementary to a first region of one of said immobilized non-cleaved target nucleic acids and a second region comprising a detection sequence complementary to one of said potentially methylated target sequences, whereby selectively forming a plurality of different hybridization complexes between said immobilized non-cleaved target nucleic acids and said different target probes indicates the presence of methylation in said population of double-stranded target nucleic acids.