Highly sensitive and specific non-radioactive biotinylated probes for dot-blot, Southern and colony hybridizations.

We describe a simple method for the incorporation of biotin into nucleic acid probes. This method has been improved and optimized to produce biotinylated DNA probes for the detection of DNA by dot-blot, Southern and colony hybridization techniques. The sensitivity of this method has been particularly improved to allow detection of DNA quantities under one femtogram. Probes prepared by this method are highly specific for target DNA even in crude bacterial lysates.