Patent ID: 8034911

Claim:
A universal nucleic acid anchoring system comprising a surface first chemical moiety which participates in covalent carboxyl bond formation with a second chemical moiety conjugated to a tag oligonucleotide rendered partially double-stranded by annealing an α-tag to the tag oligonucleotide to provide a 3′ overhang portion of the tag oligonucleotide, wherein the tag oligonucleotide is employed as a substrate for ligase mediated covalent bonding to a single-stranded target nucleic acid molecule, such that the single-stranded target nucleic acid molecule is ligated to the tag oligonucleotide, wherein the tag oligonucleotide comprises the second chemical moiety conjugated to a known oligonucleotide sequence via a molecule having the structure mc+n atoms, from about 1 to about 100, wherein m is the number of repeats, c is the number of atoms in each repeat, and n is the number of atoms not in the repeats.