RNA‐Templated Chemistry in Cells: Discrimination of Escherichia, Shigella and Salmonella Bacterial Strains With a New Two‐Color FRET Strategy

RNA-templated chemistry to discriminate pathogenic bacteria. A new variant of FRET quenched autoligation (QUAL) probes is described; in the new design, electrophilic QUAL probes contain both a quencher and fluorescein or a fluorescein-tetramethylrhodamine FRET pair; RNA-templated ligation with nucleophilic phosphorothioate probes yields a green or red signal with a single excitation. We test the probes in discrimination of pathogenic strains of bacteria.