Oligo fingerprinting

This technique was developed by several researchers: Drmanac-Crkvenjakov [3], Bains-Smith [1], Southern [21] and Macevics [12]. First, we create a type I DNA-array with the cDNAs we have extracted from the tissue. We then perform a hybridization experiment against a short oligo (between 7 and 15 bases long). We read the hybridization pattern, and we repeat this procedure with other oligos (150-500 oligos are considered enough). The result is a matrix M where $M_{ij}=1 \mbox{ iff cDNA $i$\space hybridized with oligo $j$ }$. For each cDNA fragment i, the i-th row indicates which oligos hybridized to this fragment. Therefore, we say that M_i is the fingerprint of clone i. This fingerprint, just like a barcode, identifies the cDNA, and cDNAs originating from the same gene will have similar fingerprints.