Patent ID: 8012690

Claim:
A method of enriching for sequestered populations of amplified nucleic acid molecules, comprising: distributing a solution comprising a plurality of beads and a plurality of species of template nucleic acid molecules into a plurality of aqueous emulsion droplets in a continuous oil phase, wherein a first subset of the droplets comprise one or more of the beads and one or more of the species of template nucleic acid molecule compartmentalized therein, and a second subset of the droplets comprise one or more of the beads without any of the species of template nucleic acid molecules compartmentalized therein; amplifying the species of template nucleic acid molecules within the first subset of the droplets, wherein a plurality of nucleic acid molecules complementary to the species of template nucleic acid molecules are immobilized to the one or more beads within the first subset of the droplets; breaking the aqueous emulsion droplets to release the beads of the first and second subsets; and attaching one or more of the beads of the first subset comprising the immobilized complementary copies to one or more enrichment beads, wherein the beads of the first subset are attached to the one or more enrichment beads by hybridizing a capture primer to a portion of one or more of the immobilized complementary nucleic acid molecules and the capture primer is coupled to the enrichment beads; isolating the one or more enrichment beads away from the beads of the second subset; and separating the enrichment beads from the beads of the first subset by separating the capture primers from the immobilized complementary nucleic acid molecules.