Patent ID: 7888027

Claim:
A method of measuring the concentration of an analyte in a solution through interference and recuperation of a polymerization reaction, wherein the method comprises: selecting a polynucleotide primer and a polynucleotide template, wherein the primer comprises an initiation region and anneals to the template for a polynucleotide polymerization reaction; selecting a binding compound; selecting an analog to an analyte and conjugating the analog to the polynucleotide primer or the polynucleotide template to construct a reagent for measuring the amount of the analyte in an assay solution using the polynucleotide polymerization reaction; wherein, the binding of the reagent to the binding compound in the assay solution competes with the binding of the analyte to the binding compound in the assay solution; selecting a polymerase for catalyzing the polynucleotide polymerization reaction; determining a desired ratio of the binding compound to the reagent for a given concentration of the analyte in the assay solution and a preselected amount of the polymerase; creating an assay solution containing an amount of the binding compound and the analyte in the amount to be measured; adding an amount of the reagent to the assay solution, wherein the amount of the reagent and the amount of the binding compound provides the desired ratio of the binding compound to the reagent; adding the preselected amount of the polymerase to the assay solution to catalyze the polynucleotide polymerization reaction; and measuring the activity of the polymerase during the polynucleotide polymerization to determine the amount of the analyte in the assay solution; wherein, the analog does not block the annealing of the primer to the template, blocks the polymerization reaction following the annealing, and a recuperation of the reaction provides the activity of the polymerase, and the measured activity of the polymerase provides a measure of the amount of analyte present.