Patent ID: 7618778

Claim:
A method of forming a population of nucleic acid sequence tags, comprising: covalently coupling the first target nucleic acid to a first end of a first nucleic acid bridge and covalently coupling the second target nucleic acid to a second end of the first nucleic acid bridge to form a linear chimeric nucleic acid intermediate, wherein the first nucleic acid bridge is disposed between the first target nucleic acid and the second target nucleic acid, wherein the first nucleic acid bridge comprises a cleavage site for a cleaving agent and two restriction endonuclease recognition sequences for endonucleases that cleave at a sequence outside the opposite ends of the nucleic acid bridge; cleaving the first nucleic acid bridge with the cleaving agent and covalently coupling a second nucleic acid bridge to the cleaved ends of the first nucleic acid bridge to form a modified linear chimeric nucleic acid intermediate comprising the second nucleic acid bridge disposed between a portion of the first nucleic acid bridge and the first target nucleic acid and a portion of the first nucleic acid bridge and second target nucleic acid; producing from the modified linear chimeric nucleic acid intermediate a first sequence tag and a second sequence tag, wherein the first sequence tag comprises at least a portion of the first target nucleic acid and at least a portion of the first nucleic acid bridge, and wherein the second sequence tag comprises at least a portion of the second target nucleic acid and at least a portion of the first nucleic acid bridge, wherein the at least a first portion of the first target nucleic acid comprises a first addressable portion and wherein the at least a first portion of the second target nucleic acid comprises a second addressable portion, and wherein the first sequence tag and the second sequence tag are suitable for simultaneous detection without requiring pooling, sorting, or adapter mediated indexing.