Patent ID: 8735327

Claim:
A method of making a combinatorial DNA taggant, the method comprising: a) defining a table of table-mer DNA nucleotide sequences having n columns and q rows, the sequences having a length of t nucleotides, and the table containing n×q table-mers, wherein each table-mer possesses a unique nucleotide sequence and wherein n, q, and t are natural numbers and n and q each have a value greater than 1; b) defining a library of q n DNA taggants having lengths of n×t nucleotides, wherein each of the DNA taggants is a unique combination of the n×q table-mers; c) performing a combinatorial analysis to identify a plurality of combinatorial covering DNA strands that simulate a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) response of at least a first one of the DNA taggants of the library wherein sequences of the combinatorial covering strands and primers used in simulating the PCR response are each selected from combinations of the table-mer sequences and their reverse complements; and d) synthesizing the plurality of combinatorial covering DNA strands as the combinatorial DNA taggant.