Patent Document ID: 20100138198
Application ID: 12330442
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of estimating the amount of initial target nucleic acid in a sample prior to nucleic acid amplification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), said method comprising: modeling signal intensity data generated across a range of PCR cycles with a phenomenological model in concert with a chemical model, to yield an estimate of the amount of initial target nucleic acid in the sample; and outputting an estimate of the amount of initial target nucleic acid in the sample to a user or computer readable format; wherein in the phenomenological model, signal intensity is a function of background, initial target nucleic acid, and amplification efficiency for one or more cycles defined as the fractional amount of target nucleic acid in a reaction mixture generated in a given PCR cycle; and in the chemical model, the amount of target nucleic acid generated in a reaction mixture in a given PCR cycle is estimated from kinetic or equilibrium modeling of chemical reactions occurring in the given PCR cycle.