Georgetown University

Berenice Alfonso

Mark Danielsen

Bolor Tumurpurev

The present invention relates to a novel method for detecting a target polynucleotide having a target sequence, comprising hybridizing the target polynucleotide with a probe to form a hybrid; exposing the hybrid to a 5' exonuclease so that the probe in the hybrid is digested and the target polynucleotide is dissociated from the digested probe; repeating the hybridization step and the digestion step; and detecting the digested probes. The presence of the digested probes indicates the presence of the target polynucleotide.

Exonuclease cycling assay

The present invention relates to a novel method for detecting a target polynucleotide having a target sequence, comprising (a) exposing the target polynucleotide to an initiating oligonucleotide; (b) extending the initiating oligonucleotide with an extended sequence complementary to the target sequence; (c) ligating the initiating oligonucleotide sequence with the extended sequence to form a circular oligonucleotide having a nicking endonuclease (NE) recognition/cutting sequence; (d) exposing the circular oligonucleotide to a DNA polymerase and a DNA synthesis primer to synthesize DNA having a NE recognition sequence; (e) exposing the synthesized DNA to a probe having the NE recognition/cutting sequence to form a double stranded DNA having a full NE site; (f) exposing the double stranded DNA to a nicking endonuclease (NE) to cleave the probe; and (g) detecting the cleaved probe. The presence of the cleaved probe indicates the presence of the target polynucleotide.

Growing community of inventors

Fairfax Station, VA, United States of America

Berenice Alfonso