Patent ID: 8073627

Claim:
A system for identifying a pathogen, said system comprising: a.) an automatic fluidics control system configured to receive two or more amplification products of nucleic acid of said pathogen, said two or more amplification products produced with two or more primer pairs wherein at least one of said two or more primer pairs hybridizes to conserved coding regions of a nucleic acid gene sequence wherein said conserved regions flank at least one variable coding region of said nucleic acid gene sequence of said pathogen; b.) a mass spectrometer configured to directly receive said two or more amplification products from said fluidics control system and configured to provide two or more molecular masses of said two or more amplification products; c.) a computer program stored on a computer readable medium configured to receive and convert said two or more molecular masses to two or more base compositions wherein said base compositions identify the number but not the nucleic acid gene sequence order of A residues, C residues, T residues, G residues, U residues, analogues thereof or mass tag residues thereof in said two or more amplification products without sequencing said two or more amplification products; d.) a database stored on a computer readable medium, said database comprising, for at least 19 known pathogens, base compositions of amplification products each indexed to a corresponding primer pair and a pathogen, wherein said amplification products have a variable region flanked by conserved coding regions and wherein at least one of said two or more primer pairs hybridizes to said conserved coding region; and, e.) a pathogen identification module configured to receive said two or more base compositions from said computer program, and configured to query said received two or more base compositions against said database and configured to determine a match between said two or more base compositions and a member of said at least nineteen base compositions of said database.