In Situ Hybridization

Abstract

In situ hybridization is a cytochemical technique for localizing specific DNA or RNA sequences within an organism. Applications of in situ hybridization technology are diverse. The most common usage in plant cell biology is localization of a messenger RNA (mRNA) at the light microscopic level. This chapter focuses on in situ hybridization and its applications, such as localization of DNA elements on isolated chromosomes, localization of genes or transcripts at the subcellular level by electron microscopy, and in situ polymerase chain reaction (PCR). There are two major categories of labels and detection systems for in situ hybridization: isotopic and nonisotopic. Both have relative merits, d..