Gene Hybridization

Gene Hybridization

Hybridization is the process, discovered by Alexander Rich, of combining complementary, single-stranded nucleic acids into a single molecule. Nucleotides will bind to their complement under normal conditions, so two perfectly complementary strands will bind to each other readily. This is called annealing. However, due to the different molecular geometries of the nucleotides, a single inconsistency between the two strands will make binding between them more energetically unfavorable.

Hybridization Probe

In molecular biology, a hybridization probe is a fragment of DNA of variable length (usually 100-1000 bases long), which is used to detect in DNA or RNA samples the presence of nucleotide sequences (the DNA target) that are complementary to the sequence in the probe. The probe thereby hybridizes to single-stranded nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) whose base sequence allows probe-target base pairing due to complementarily between the probe and target. The labeled probe is first denatured (by heating or under alkaline conditions) into single DNA strands and then hybridized to the target DNA (Southern blotting) or RNA (northern blotting) immobilized on a membrane or in situi.

Immunohistochemistry

Immunohistochemistry is a technique for identifying cellular or tissue constituents (antigens) by means of antigen-antibody interactions, the site of antibody binding being identify Either by direct labelling of the antibody, or by use of a secondary labelling method.