Patent ID: 7115363

Claim:
A method of detecting HIV-2 retrovirus nucleic acid in a biological sample, said method comprising: a) contacting said sample with an HIV-2 specific probe under stringent hybridization conditions, wherein said probe comprises an HIV-2 nucleic acid molecule, which hybridizes to HIV-2 ROD genomic DNA deposited as CNCM I-352 under stringent hybridization conditions; wherein the probe comprises an HIV-2 nucleic acid molecule obtained from nucleotides 1–380 of the U3/R region of HIV-2, nucleotides 1–1566 of the gag gene of HIV-2, nucleotides 1114–1524 of the gag gene, nucleotides 1–405 of the gag gene, nucleotides 406–1155 of the gag gene, or nucleotides 1–2673 of the env gene of HIV-2 or a fragment of said nucleic acid molecules; b) washing the resulting hybrid; and c) detecting said hybrid.