Patent ID: 8071309

Claim:
A method of differentiating two or more bioagents, comprising: a) contacting nucleic acid from two or more bioagents with two or more oligonucleotide primers that hybridize to sequence regions of said nucleic acid from said two or more bioagents that are conserved among different bioagents, wherein said conserved sequence regions flank a variable sequence region to produce two or more amplification products; b) determining base compositions of said two or more amplification products wherein said base compositions of said two or more amplification products comprise identification of the number, but not the nucleic acid sequence order, of A residues, C residues, T residues, G residues, U residues, analogs thereof and/or mass tag residues thereof in said two or more amplification products; and c) differentiating said two or more bioagents by comparing said determined base compositions to a database comprising a plurality of calculated or measured base compositions of amplification products from a plurality of different bioagents obtained by amplification of at least one nucleic acid gene sequence from said plurality of different bioagents using said two or more oligonucleotide primers.