Other uses of hybridization

Hybridization has other uses in biology. We cannot discuss all of them, but we will mention two more. One of these uses is resequencing. If we have DNA that is already sequenced, we can design a special purpose chip that will detect specific mutations in that DNA. For instance, let us assume we have already sequenced the DNA of the HIV virus. We can design a special-purpose chip, that will detect which type of the virus we are dealing with. Detecting will be easy: Expose the chip to a solution containing virus DNA, and then check where hybridization occurs. For each virus type, hybridization will occur with different oligos. Similarly, hybridization can be used to detect Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), that is point mutations in the DNA, common only to a part of the population.