MODIFIED MICROBIAL NUCLEIC ACID FOR USE IN DETECTION AND ANALYSIS OF MICROORGANISMS

摘要

The present invention provides derivatives or modified nucleic acid sequences of several microorganisms for use in the detection and analysis of said microorganisms. The derivative nucleic acids contain the bases adenosine (A), guanosine (G), T (thymine) and U (uracil or some other non-A, G or T base or base-like entity). Given that microbial nucleic acids do not contain methylated cytosine (C) or other C alterations, all C are converted to U. These sequences are amplified where the U in the derivative nucleic acid is replaced by a T, resulting in a modified sequence with the same number of total bases as the corresponding unmodified microbial nucleic acid sequence but made up of a combination of three bases only: A, G and T. As a consequence of this process the nucleic acids derived from the upper and lower strands of the original dsDNA are no longer complementary and the modified microbial sequences have reduced relative genomic complexity for use in detection and analysis of microorganisms.