Microdissection and Reverse Chromosome Painting

The technique of chromosome microdissection was initially developed for generating DNA libraries from specific parts of polytene chromosomes of Drosophila (Scalenghe 1981) in order to isolate certain genes known to be localized in those regions. First improvements of this original technique such as the use of GTG-banded chromosomes and the invention of the first sequence independent DNA amplification system (Ludecke 1989, Senger 1990, Ludecke 1990) allowed the generation of microdissection libraries from precisely defined regions of human chromosomes and a stepwise reduction of the number of chromosomes that had to be dissected for one library. By Trautmann and co-worker (1991) it was shown for the first time that microdissection libraries can be used as painting probes for in situ hybridization.