Multicolor Whole-Mount In Situ Hybridization

作者：Giselbert Hauptmann, Thomas Gerster · 发表于：Humana Press eBooks · 年份：2003 · DOI：10.1385/1-59259-066-7:139 · 被引用次数：157 · 研究领域：Developmental Biology and Gene Regulation、Animal Genetics and Reproduction、Pluripotent Stem Cells Research

In situ hybridization is a procedure that allows the detection of the site(s) of transcription of a given gene at a cellular level within an entire organism. Since its introduction into developmental biology ( 1 ), this procedure has become an indispensable tool to investigate gene expression; initial protocols employed tritiated probes. These procedures required very long exposure times and allowed the detection of transcripts only on tissue sections. The method was drastically improved by the use of nonradioactive digoxigenin-labeled probes. This allowed the detection of gene transcription also in whole-mounted Drosophila embryos ( 2 ). This enhanced technique allowed to obtain results within a few days instead of weeks. The Drosophila protocol was quickly adapted to embryos of vertebrate model organisms that are widely used in developmental biology like Xenopus ( 3 ), zebrafish ( 4 ) and mice ( 5 ). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.