Patent ID: 7074599

Claim:
A method for detecting the presence or absence of Staphylococcus in a biological sample from an individual, said method comprising: performing at least one cycling step, wherein a cycling step comprises an amplifying step and a hybridizing step, wherein said amplifying step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of mecA primers to produce a mecA amplification product if a Staphylococcus mecA nucleic acid molecule is present in said sample, wherein said pair of mecA primers comprises a first mecA primer and a second mecA primer, wherein said first mecA primer comprises the sequence 5â€²-AAACTACGG TAACATTGATCG CAAC-3â€² (SEQ ID NO:1), wherein said hybridizing step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of mecA probes, wherein the members of said pair of mecA probes hybridize to said amplification product within no more than five nucleotides of each other, wherein a first mecA probe of said pair of mecA probes is labeled with a donor fluorescent moiety and wherein a second mecA probe of said pair of mecA probes is labeled with a corresponding acceptor fluorescent moiety; and detecting the presence or absence of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between said donor fluorescent moiety of said first mecA probe and said acceptor fluorescent moiety of said second mecA probe, wherein the presence of FRET is indicative of the presence of Staphylococcus in said biological sample, and wherein the absence of FRET is indicative of the absence of Staphylococcus in said biological sample.