Patent ID: 7427475

Claim:
A method for detecting the presence or absence of Group B Streptococcus (GBS) in a biological sample from an individual, said method comprising: performing at least one cycling step, wherein a cycling step comprises an amplifying step and a hybridizing step, wherein said amplifying step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of pts primers to produce an pts amplification product if a GBS pts nucleic acid molecule is present in said sample, wherein said pair of pts primers comprises a first pts primer and a second pts primer, wherein said first pts primer consists of the sequence 5′-TGA GAA GGC AGT AGA AAG CTT AG-3′ (SEQ ID NO:1) and wherein said second pts primer consists of the sequence 5′-TGC ATG TAT GGG TTA TCT TCC-′3 (SEQ ID NO:2), wherein said hybridizing step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of pts probes, wherein said pair of pts probes comprises a first pts probe and a second pts probe, wherein said first pts probe consists of the sequence 5′-CAA ATT AAA GAG ACT ATT CGT GCA A-3′ (SEQ ID NO:3) and wherein said second pts probe consists of the sequence 5′-CAA GTA AAT GCA GAA ACA GG-3′ (SEQ ID NO:4), wherein the members of said pair of pts probes hybridize to said amplification product within no more than five nucleotides of each other, wherein said first pts probe is labeled with a donor fluorescent moiety and wherein said second pts probe is labeled with a corresponding acceptor fluorescent moiety; and detecting the presence or absence of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between said donor fluorescent moiety of said first pts probe and said acceptor fluorescent moiety of said second pts probe, wherein the presence of FRET is indicative of the presence of GBS in said biological sample, and wherein the absence of FRET is indicative of the absence of GBS in said biological sample.