Patent ID: 7888075

Claim:
A method for detecting Staphylococcus aureus in a biological sample comprising: (a) converting the non-methylated cytosines present in the nucleic acids contained in a biological sample, to uracils to produce sequence-modified nucleic acids, (b) bringing the biological sample containing the sequence modified nucleic acids in contact with: (i) a first primer pair which is complementary to a segment of a marker gene specific for Staphylococcus aureus of the sequence modified nucleic acids; (ii) a second primer pair which is complementary to a segment of the mecA gene of the sequence modified nucleic acids; and (iii) a third primer pair, one primer of which is complementary to a segment of SCCmec of the sequence modified nucleic acids and the other primer of which is complementary to a segment of the orfx gene of the sequence modified nucleic acids; under conditions wherein the primers specifically hybridize and amplification products of the sequence-modified nucleic acids are produced; and (c) identifying the modified nucleic acids from Staphylococcus aureus by detecting the amplification product produced by one or more of the primer pairs.