Southern Blotting of Parasite DNA

Southern blotting, first described by E. M. Southern in 1975 (1 ), is one of the cornerstones in molecular biology. The idea to immobilize DNA on a solid support was first proposed by Denhardt (2 ). Based on this, methods were developed for the identification of specific sequences in dot blots and recombinant clones. The procedure subsequently described by Southern allowed the transfer of size-fractionated DNA molecules to a membrane. Hybridization of a specific probe to the immobilized DNA made it possible to study the genomic distribution of single and multicopy sequences.