Proteins are involved in several cellular processes and biochemical reactions. Analyzing a specific protein of interest requires it to be isolated from the other proteins in the cell. This is achieved by overexpressing the specific gene in a suitable host to produce large quantities of the target protein. A tag or label is recombined with the gene to produce a fusion protein containing the target protein and the tag. The tags on these fusion proteins can then be used for easy detection and...

Fluorescence in situ hybridization, or FISH, was developed in the early 1980s and has quickly become one of the most widely used techniques in cytogenetics. Labeled probes are used to bind complementary DNA or RNA sequences on a chromosome or in a region within a cell. Earlier, the probes could only be obtained by cloning or reverse transcription of a DNA template. Currently, the probe oligonucleotides can be synthesized synthetically. Additionally, with the advancement of optical techniques,...

RNA sequencing, or RNA-Seq, is a high-throughput sequencing technology used to study the transcriptome of a cell. Transcriptomics helps to interpret the functional elements of a genome and identify the molecular constituents of an organism. Additionally, it also helps in understanding the development of an organism and the occurrence of diseases. 
Before the discovery of RNA-seq, microarray-based methods and Sanger sequencing were used for transcriptome analysis. However, while...

Different fluorescence-based techniques are used to study the protein dynamics in living cells. These techniques include FRAP, FRET, and PET.
Fluorescent recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is a fluorescent-protein-based detection technique used to quantify protein movement rates within the cell. This method exposes a small portion of the cell to an intense laser beam. The laser beam causes permanent photobleaching of the fluorophore-tagged proteins in the exposed region. As the bleached...

DNA probes are fragments of DNA labeled with a reporter tag to enable their detection or purification. The resulting labeled DNA probes can then hybridize to target nucleic acid sequences through complementary base-pairing, and may be used to recover or identify these regions.
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...