Methods for providing bacterial bioagent characterizing information

A method for providing bioagent characterizing information comprising:

• a) measuring or calculating with a mass spectrometer a plurality of molecular masses corresponding to a plurality of amplification products, wherein the amplification products are 46 to 166 nucleobases in length, and wherein the amplification products are obtained by amplification of at least one target sequence of a bioagent nucleic acid gene sequence using a primer pair that hybridizes to the at least one target sequence region of at least nineteen bioagents said target sequence region comprising two conserved regions that are hybridizable with the primer pair and that flank a variable region that uniquely varies between at least eight bioagents;
• b) calculating a base composition from said molecular mass measurement, wherein it identifies the number of A residues, C residues, T residues, G residues, U residues, analogues thereof and mass tag residues thereof;
• c) interrogating a database stored on a computer readable medium with an identification query, wherein the identification query comprises comparison of the base composition data from step b) with the database;
• said database comprises base composition data calculated for the target sequence regions for at least nineteen of the bioagents and each of the calculated base compositions is indexed to bioagent characterizing information;
• and
• d) delivering from the database a response comprising bioagent characterization information generated by the comparison of said measured and calculated base composition of step c) thereby identifying the bioagent associated with an amplification product of step a).