Patent ID: 7205111

Claim:
A method of identifying bacteria in a biological sample, the method comprising: (a) isolating nucleic acid present within a known species of bacteria; (b) specifically amplifying the isolated nucleic acid from step (a) by the polymerase chain reaction using at least two distinct, non-overlapping pairs of labeled primers, wherein the primers selectively prime amplification of DNA encoding bacterial 16S rRNA from the known species of bacteria, thereby yielding bacteria-specific amplicons for the known species of bacteria; wherein the bacteria-specific amplicons do not overlap in sequence (c) digesting the amplicons of step (b) with at least one restriction endonuclease to yield restriction fragments; (d) size-sorting the restriction fragments from step (c) to yield a restriction fragment length profile for the known species of bacteria; and (e) repeating steps (a) through (d) for other known species of bacteria, to yield a database of standard restriction fragment length profiles for each known species of bacteria; and (f) isolating nucleic acid present within the biological sample and repeating steps (b) through (d) to yield a restriction fragment length profile for the biological sample; and then (g) comparing the restriction fragment length profile for the biological sample of step (f) to the database of step (e), whereby bacteria present in the biological sample are identified, at the species level.