Patent ID: 7702466

Claim:
A method for selecting nucleic acid probes based on similarities among differential responses in hybridizing to target nucleic acid sequences, comprising: (a) selecting a set of candidate probes; (b) hybridizing said candidate probes to nucleic acid sequences of each of a set of target nucleic acid sequences representing diverse biological isolates; (c) processing intensity pattern data for said set of candidate probes, wherein the intensity pattern data represents intensities of markers associated with said candidate probes upon hybridization to said nucleic acid sequences of each of said set of target nucleic acid sequences representing diverse biological isolates, and wherein said processing generates a one-dimensional value corresponding to each candidate probe, and wherein the relative similarities between said one-dimensional values represent the relative similarities of their differential responses; (d) identifying a most represented group among said one-dimensional values; and (e) selecting nucleic acid probes from candidate probes corresponding to said most represented one-dimensional values; wherein said processing is performed by a NeuroScale neural network.