Patent ID: 7781162

Claim:
A method of identifying a virus comprising: contacting nucleic acid from said virus with at least one pair of primers which hybridize to flanking sequences of said nucleic acid, wherein said flanking sequences flank a variable nucleic acid sequence of said virus; amplifying said variable nucleic acid sequence to produce an amplification product; determining the base composition of said amplification product by mass spectrometry, wherein said base composition identifies the number of A residues, C residues, T residues, G residues, U residues, analogues thereof and mass tag residues thereof in said amplification product; and comparing said base composition of said amplification product to calculated or measured base compositions of analogous amplification products of one or more known viruses present in a database comprising 5 or more base compositions with the proviso that sequencing of said amplification product is not used to identify the virus.