ABSTRACT
Subtractive hybridization provides a means of depleting nucleotide sequences which are common to two mRNA populations, resulting in a relative enrichment of sequences unique to the experimental target tissue of interest. The success of any subtractive hybridization approach will be determined in large part by two characteristics of the mRNA population in the biological system to be investigated. First, the extent to which the abundance of a specific transcript differs between tissue types or within a tissue between experimental conditions. A second important parameter is the nucleotide sequence complexity of the mRNA populations in the tissues to be investigated. Since its introduction and early success in the identification of the T-cell receptor and other immune-related genes, the subtractive hybridization method has been a very productive technique for the isolation of messenger ribonucleic acids specific to tissue types and stages of development.
