Different strategies of differential display: areas of application

The main goal of this review is to provide some guide-lines for choosing a proper method when searching for differentially expressed transcripts. The choice of an approach should depend upon particular features of the experiment and project requirements. We outline some general considerations to help decide between differential display-related techniques and subtractive hybridization. While discussing advantages and problems of differential display, special attention is given to several recently developed methods based on alternative principles of fingerprint production, which provide a possibility for complete systematic investigation of RNA samples.