High speed, high fidelity, high sensitivity nucleic acid detection

1. A method for detecting a target nucleic acid, consisting essentially of:

(a) contacting a plurality of target-specific nucleic acid probes that are each complementary to a target nucleic acid, to a sample under conditions whereby the plurality of target-specific nucleic acid probes hybridize to the target nucleic acid if the target nucleic acid is present in the sample, wherein upon hybridization to the target nucleic acid, the target-specific nucleic acid probes form a series of target-specific nucleic acid probes directly adjacent to one another, wherein a first target specific nucleic acid probe is capable of binding or is bound to a molecular post and a second target-specific nucleic acid probe is capable of binding or is bound to a detection probe, and wherein the first target-specific nucleic acid probe and the second target-specific nucleic acid probe are positioned at the 5′ and 3′ end, respectively, of the series of target specific nucleic acid probes;

(b) binding the molecular post to the first target-specific nucleic acid probe and/or binding the detection probe to the second target-specific nucleic acid probe if the molecular post and/or detection probe were not bound prior to hybridization;

(c) ligating the series of target-specific nucleic acid probes together to produce a ligation product;

(d) after ligating then binding the molecular post to the first target-specific nucleic acid probe and/or binding the detection probe to the second target-specific nucleic acid probe and forming a concentration gradient of ligation products prior to contacting the ligation products with the molecular post and/or detection probe;

(e) treating the ligation product with one or both of:

(i) exonuclease digestion; and

(ii) denaturation to create all single stranded bridges after ligation;

(f) binding the molecular post to the first target-specific nucleic acid probe and/or binding the detection probe to the second target-specific nucleic acid probe if the molecular post and/or detection probe were not bound prior to the step (e) treatment; and

(g) then detecting the ligation product.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step (e) treatment comprises exonuclease digestion.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step (e) treatment comprises denaturation.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of target specific nucleic acid probes comprises at least 3 target specific nucleic acid probes.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of target specific nucleic acid probes comprises at least 5 target specific nucleic acid probes.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the ligation comprise ligation chain reaction.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the molecular post comprises a magnetic particle.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising applying a magnetic field to move the ligation product.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the molecular post is immobilized for detection.

10. The method of any claim 1 , wherein the detecting comprises fluorescence microscopy, surface plasmon resonance, gel electrophoresis, calorimetric shifts, electric conductivity or autoradiography.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the sample is selected from the group consisting of synthetic nucleic acids, genomic DNA, cell lysates, tissue homogenates, forensic samples, environmental samples, and isolated nucleic acid samples.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the target nucleic acid comprises double stranded DNA.