Patent ID: 7763426

Claim:
A pair of oligonucleotide probes, the pair consisting of a capture probe and a detector probe, each of which is 10-15 bases in length, and that specifically hybridize under highly stringent conditions to adjacent regions of a target nucleic acid molecule that consists of a target capture region and a target detector region, respectively, of bacterial ribosomal RNA (rRNA), wherein the target capture region and target detector region are, or are fully complementary to, nucleic acid molecules substantially corresponding to a pair of sequences consisting of: SEQ ID NO: 28, target capture region of E. coli , and SEQ ID NO: 29, target detector region of E. coli wherein the highly stringent conditions comprise hybridization and washes at 20° C. to 39° C. in 1M phosphate buffer at native pH, and wherein the probes share 100% identity or complementarity to SEQ ID NO: 28 and 29.