Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Visualization of Microbiota in Tick Guts by Whole-mount In Situ Hybridization
Published on: June 1, 2018
Imaging of RNA in bacteria with self-ligating quenched probes
1Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5080, USA.
Abstract:
We report on the application of a new class of oligonucleotide reporter probes, QUAL probes, that "light up" when a nucleophilic phosphorothioate probe binds adjacent to a dabsyl-quenched probe. These self-ligating DNA probes were used for sequence-specific detection of 16S rRNA in Escherichia coli cells. Strong fluorescence was observed only when the phosphorothioate and quenched dabsyl probes bind side-by-side on a 16S rRNA target. The results demonstrate the use of QUAL probes to detect specific RNA sequences in bacterial cells without enzymes and without washing steps.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Labeling DNA Probes
Radioisotopes, fluorophores, or small molecule binding partners like biotin or digoxigenin, are the most widely used reporter tags for labeling DNA probes. These labels can be attached to the probe DNA molecule via...
In-situ Hybridization
Types of probes and labels
A probe is a complementary strand of DNA or RNA that binds to corresponding nucleotide sequences in a cell. Many...

