Coincidence cloning. Taking the coincidences out of genome analysis

The term "coincidence cloning" encompasses a wide range of methodologies, the aim of which is to isolate DNA sequences which occur in both of two input DNA sources. The nature of these input DNAs may be genomic or cDNA, cloned or uncloned, and as such the far reaching applicability of the techniques can be imagined. If the input DNAs are genomic then the product will be enriched for useful markers co-occurring between the two. If the input DNAs comprise one genomic resource and one cDNA resource the product will contain genes mapping to that particular genomic region. In this review a comparative description of the range of coincidence cloning methods is given, together with a discussion of their applications. Finally, consideration is given to the general limitations of these techniques.