Patent ID: 7258975

Claim:
A method of detecting the presence or absence of a deletion of a guanosine at position 30 of the connexin 26 gene in a human, said method comprising: a) contacting a biological sample containing DNA from the human with a pair of oligonucleotide primers under conditions permitting hybridization of the pair of oligonucleotide primers with the DNA contained in the biological sample, said pair of oligonucleotide primers capable of amplifying a region of interest in the connexin 26 gene; b) amplifying said region of interest in the connexin 26 gene, thereby producing amplified DNA; and c) detecting the presence or absence of a deletion of a guanosine at position 30 of the connexin 26 gene in the amplified DNA, thereby detecting the presence or absence of a deletion of a guanosine at position 30 of the connexin 26 gene in the human; wherein step c) comprises: i) incubating the amplified DNA with a labeled detection probe that hybridizes with both a wild type connexin 26 sequence and a 30delG mutant sequence, and a first capture probe that hybridizes with said wild type connexin 26 sequence but does not hybridize with said 30delG mutant sequence; ii) incubating the amplified DNA with said labeled detection probe and a second capture probe that hybridizes with said mutant 30delG sequence but does not hybridize with said wild type connexin 26 sequence; and iii) detecting hybridization; wherein, if the amplified DNA hybridizes with the second capture probe, the presence of a deletion of a guanosine at position 30 of the connexin gene is detected in the human, and if the amplified DNA hybridizes with the first capture probe, the absence of a deletion of a guanosine at position 30 of the connexin gene is detected in the human.