Nucleic acid hybridization

Hybridization (Latin hybrida. Mongrel, bastard; engl hybridisation ) denotes a significant for molecular genetic techniques process in which at a single strand of DNA (eg, Southern blot) or RNA (eg, Northern blot) a more or less complete complementary DNA or RNA single strand anneals by hydrogen bonds between the complementary nucleobases are formed.

The hybridization technique used to prove the structural relationship of nucleic acids as well as for the isolation of specific nucleic acid sequences from a mixture. The better the mutually binding the DNA strands are complementary, ie the higher the proportion of the correct complementary base pairs in the hybrid DNA, the higher is the time required for separation into single strands temperature (melting temperature), because the form due to the better base pairing more hydrogen bonds have, as in a hybrid with a lower proportion of correct base-pairing. So can be estimated at the temperature necessary for the separation of the hybridized DNA strands, how similar are the complementary nucleotide sequences of the two DNA strands. This rule of thumb is that a deviation of 1 K ( Kelvin temperature unit ), representing about 1.3 % of unpaired bases.

By labeling with radioactive tracers, or fluorescent dyes, enzymes, and a shorter, usually synthetic DNA chain may be used as probes by means of hybridization to identify corresponding nucleic acids. Hybridization technique in combination with other molecular genetic techniques used, inter alia, as an in- situ method, for example, on brain slices, important. Hybridization of primers in a polymerase chain reaction is known as the primer hybridization.