Competitive displacement of DNA during surface hybridization.

Using real-time dual-color fluorescence detection, we have experimentally tracked individual target species during competitive DNA surface hybridization in a two-component sample. Our experimental results demonstrate displacement of the lower affinity species by the higher affinity species and corroborate recent theoretical models describing competitive DNA surface hybridization. Competition at probe sites complementary to one of the two DNA species was monitored in separate experiments for two different target pairs. Each pair differs in sequence by a single nucleotide polymorphism, and one pair includes a folding target. We propose a mechanistic interpretation of the differences between hybridization curves of targets in multi-component and single-component experiments.