Translating nucleic-acid hybridization into universal DNA-reporter sequences

Nucleic-acid hybridization occurs between an oligonucleotide with a known sequence (probe) and its complementary counterpart to form an organized structure. Generally, in hybridization-based detection, different labeled probes must be synthesized for various target sequences of interest. To avoid the trouble of having to label each individual probe for detecting each target sequence, the concept of translation of nucleic-acid hybridization was proposed. A hybridization translator is defined as a DNA sequence that can convert any hybridization reaction into a unique output sequence. The translation process is performed by applying a particular oligonucleotide probe consisting of two unrelated DNA fragments. One fragment is a recognition element and other is a universal reporter element, which comprises a sequence not present within the sample material. In this article, we summarize progress in the development of a DNA-hybridization translator for the detection of nucleic acids.