Progresses and applications of fluorescence in situ hybridization

The techniques of in situ hybridization (ISH) are widely adopted for analyzing the genetic makeup and RNA expression patterns of individual cells. There are four main criterions for evaluating this technique, including detection sensitivity, resolution, capacity and specificity. This review focuses on a number of advances made over the last years in the fluorescence in, situ hybridization (FISH). These advances can be categorized into several branches as follows: (1) Multicolor-FISH (mFISH), including conventional mFISH, combinatorial FISH, ratio labelling FISH, multicolor chromosome painting and comparative genomic hybridization (CGH); (2) Extended DNA fiber-FISH (EDF-FISH), including quantitative DNA fiber mapping (QDFM), molecular combing (MC) and dynamic molecular combing (DMC); (3) In situ. PCR-based FISH; (4) Bacterial (or yeast) artificial chromosome-FISH (BAC-FISH or YAC-FISH); (5) Tyramide signal amplification-FISH (TSA-FISH); (6) Polypeptide nucleic acid-FISH (PNA-FISH) and (7) padlock-FISH.