Patent ID: 8298760

Claim:
A method for providing bioagent characterizing information comprising: a) measuring or calculating with a mass spectrometer a plurality of molecular masses corresponding to a plurality of amplification products wherein the amplification products are obtained by amplification of at least one target sequence region of a bioagent nucleic acid gene sequence using a primer pair that hybridizes to the at least one target sequence region of at least nineteen bioagents; said target sequence region comprising two conserved regions that are hybridizable with the primer pair and that flank a variable region that uniquely varies between at least eight bioagents; b) interrogating a database stored on a computer readable medium with an identification query, wherein said identification query comprises comparison of the measured molecular mass data of step a) with said database; said database comprising molecular masses calculated or measured for the target sequence regions for at least nineteen bioagents and each of the calculated or measured molecular masses is indexed to bioagent characterizing information; c) delivering from said database a response comprising bioagent characterization information generated by the comparison of said measured molecular masses of step a) and said calculated or measured molecular masses of step b) thereby identifying a bioagent associated with an amplification product of step a).