How can one design a probe?
I assume you are talking about nucleic acid probes: one needs to have some idea of the nucleotide sequence. This can come from 1. a cloned insert isolated from a library. For example, in the process of chromosome walking, one uses cloned inserts to generate probes which can then identify neighboring clones. 2. knowledge of the nucleotide sequence of a related gene. For example, the gene for actin expressed in cardic muscle has been determined. Using the sequence of an exon from this gene, we could make a probe that might hybridize to related exons in the actin genes expressed in other muscle types. 3. knowledge of peptide sequence. If some peptide sequence is known (e.g. you have purified a protein biochemically and by microsequencing know the amino acid sequence of some peptides generated by proteolytic digestion), you can use the genetic code to direct the synthesis of oligonucleotides that would code for the peptide sequence. Because of the degeneracy of the genetic code, one typica
