Compositions and kits for detecting the presence of a hypervirulent clostridium difficile strain
AssigneeMobidiag Oy
InventorsJuha KIRVESKARI, Jaakko KURKELA
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Abstract
The present invention provides a nucleic acid amplification based method for detecting a hypervirulent Clostridium difficile strain in a biological sample. The present invention is based on the use of oligonucleotide primers and probes specific to negative and positive markers in hypervirulent Clostridium difficile genome.
Claims21
An oligonucleotide primer set comprising a first oligonucleotide comprising or consisting of at least 10 contiguous nucleotides present in the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:5 and a second oligonucleotide comprising or consisting of at least 10 contiguous nucleotides present in the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:6, wherein the primer set amplifies a target sequence in the C. difficile genome, and wherein the primer set further comprises a probe for detecting the amplified target sequence, wherein the probe comprises one or more modified nucleotides and/or a fluorescent label, radiolabel, or phosphorescent label.
A kit for detecting a hypervirulent C. difficile strain in a biological sample, the kit comprising:
- (i) an oligonucleotide primer set comprising a first oligonucleotide comprising or consisting of at least 10 contiguous nucleotides present in the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:5 and a second oligonucleotide comprising or consisting of at least 10 contiguous nucleotides present in the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:6, wherein the primer set amplifies a target sequence in the C. difficile genome;
- (ii) a probe for detecting the amplified target sequence, wherein the probe comprises one or more modified nucleotides and/or a fluorescent label, radiolabel, or phosphorescent label;
- and
- (iii) a reagent for performing amplification of a nucleic acid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.