Suppression Subtractive Hybridization in Penaeid Prawns: An Approach in Identifying Diseases and Differentially Expressed Genes

Alteration in gene transcripts is related to a wide spectrum of physiological and pathological changes in cells. Therefore, the identification of differential gene expression can be used to understand biological processes at a molecular level [1-4]. Various techniques such as Expressed Sequence Tags (EST), differential display, Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE), cDNA microarray, and subtractive hybridization have been developed to analyse differential gene expressions in any given sample [5,6]. The majority of methods used for differentially expressed genes are based on differential display and subtractive hybridization. As it is technically demanding and labour intensive due to the need for library screening to identify isolated genes, subtractive hybridization is less widely used than differential display [6,7]. However, subtractive hybridization produces fewer false positives compared to differential display [5,6].