[Probe seeks gene: nucleic acid hybridization as a current contribution to virologic diagnosis]

Molecular nucleic acid hybridization is based on the ability of single-stranded DNA/RNA to form hybrids with complementary labeled nucleic acids. This review shortly describes the components of this technique and presents the most important hybridization methods (spot-, Southern blot-, in situ-hybridization). The (potential) applications of nucleic acid hybridization as a diagnostic tool are discussed (e.g., for viruses which grow insufficiently or not at all in cell culture; virus latency; viruses with labile or antigenically variable envelope proteins, resp.; for virus classification) and yet existing limitations are indicated. An impetus for this technique in means of diagnostic application is expected to result from the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in the next future.