Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 13, 2025

Whole Mount RNA Fluorescent in situ Hybridization of Drosophila Embryos
Published on: January 30, 2013
Tagging and Application of RNA Probes for Sequence-Specific Visualization of RNAs by Fluorescent In Situ
Thomas Dresselhaus1, Andrea Bleckmann2
1Cell Biology and Plant Biochemistry, Regensburg Center for Biochemistry, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Abstract:
To understand the development and differentiation processes within a tissue and a cell, analysis of the cell type-specific gene expression pattern as well as the subcellular localization of the produced RNAs is essential. The simplest and fastest method to visualize RNA molecules is in situ hybridization (ISH) on whole-tissue samples. Over the past 40 years, various labeling and visualization techniques have been established to analyze either the expression domain of genes in tissues (using the classical chromogenic detection system) or the specific subcellular localization of mRNAs (using fluorescently labeled probes). By using the Arabidopsis root tip as an example tissue, we describe and compare classic in situ hybridization techniques. The protocols described can be easily transferred to almost all other tissues or model organism with slight modifications.
Related Concept Videos
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...
FISH - Fluorescent In-situ Hybridization
RNA-seq
Before the discovery of RNA-seq, microarray-based methods and Sanger sequencing were used for transcriptome analysis. However, while...
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...

