Patent 7807365 was granted and assigned to Hologic, Inc. on October, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The invention relates to compositions and methods of generating a signal indicative of the presence of a target nucleic acid in a sample, where the method includes forming a cleavage structure by incubating a sample comprising a target nucleic acid with a probe. The invention also includes the steps of cleaving the cleavage structure with a nuclease to release a nucleic acid fragment to generate a signal, wherein generation of the signal is indicative of the presence of a target nucleic acid in a sample.