TARGET-SPECIFIC COMPOMERS AND METHODS OF USE

摘要

The present invention provides a novel class of molecules, termed ~compomers~, that enable the indirect detection of target molecules, as well as novel target detection reagents and compomer templates that encode compomers. Compomers are linear polymers generated from the compomer template portion of a target detection reagent during the course of an assay. In a given assay, each compomer species is correlated with a different target molecule, e.g., a carbohydrate, lipid, polypeptide, or target nucleic acid, particularly a specific nucleotide sequence within a target nucleic acid molecule. When, for example, a target nucleic acid is present in an assay, a compomer species specifically and uniquely correlated with the particular target (e.g., a known SNP or other genetic variant) is generated directly from a target-specific detection reagent (or indirectly from a larger precursor encoded by the compomer template and from which it is subsequently released), after which it can readily be detected, even in an assay where tens, hundreds, or thousands of different compomer species may be generated, as each compomer species is engineered to differ from the others by a small, resolvable defined characteristic (e.g., a mass increment, a difference in subunit composition, sequence, size, length, etc.). When coupled with highly sensitive detection techniques (e.g., MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, nucleic acid hybridization, nuclear magnetic resonance, etc.), a large number of different compomer species can be detected in a single reaction, thereby facilitating highly multiplexed analyses of complex samples.