A novel method for screening species-specific gDNA probes for species identification

We report a method called SSH array which combines the suppression subtraction hybridization (SSH) and DNA array techniques to find species-specific DNA probes from genomic DNA (gDNA) for species identification. The method first obtains the differential gDNA fragments between two species by SSH and then hybridizes the differential gDNA fragments with arrays made of multiple whole genomes from several species to screen the unique gDNA fragments for one species. The screened unique gDNA fragments can be used as species-specific probes to differentiate the species they represent from all other species. We used five species of the genus Dendrobrium, D.aurantiacum Kerr, D.officinale Kimura et Migo, D.nobile Lindl., D.chrysotoxum Lindl. and D.fimbriatum Hook., as experimental materials to study the feasibility of the method. The results showed that the method could efficiently obtain different species-specific probes for each of the five species.