Methods and compositions for identification of polymers

摘要

Biological polymers such as polynucleotides are identified as targets in a sample by exposing the sample to a collection of substrate-bound probes. The substrates are beads and each bead has a different probe. When a target is present in a sample it is bound by one or more of the probes, and thereby bound to certain beads in the collection. Beads binding targets are separated from beads failing to bind targets, e.g. by a cell sorter, and then subjected to further analysis. Beads in the collection are additionally tagged (i.e. coded) in such a way that the identity of any probe, and thus the bound target, is revealed when the identity of the tag is determined.