In molecular biology, a hybridization probe (HP) is a fragment of DNA or RNA, usually 15–10000 nucleotides long, which can be radioactively or fluorescently labeled.
[1] The labeled probe is first denatured (by heating or under alkaline conditions such as exposure to sodium hydroxide) into single stranded DNA (ssDNA) and then hybridized to the target ssDNA (Southern blotting) or RNA (northern blotting) immobilized on a membrane or in situ.
[3] Examples of these types of microorganisms include: In some instances, differentiation between species may be problematic when using 16S rRNA sequences due to similarity.
[6] The global standard library of rRNA sequences is constantly becoming larger and continuously being updated, and thus the possibility of a random hybridization event between a specifically-designed probe (based on complete and current data from a range of test organisms) and an undesired/unknown target organism cannot be easily dismissed.
[8] In forensic science, hybridization probes are used, for example, for detection of short tandem repeats (microsatellite) regions[9] and in restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) methods, all of which are widely used as part of DNA profiling analysis.