Identification of Stress-Responsive Genes in Plants Using Suppression Subtraction Hybridization: Ozone Stress as an Example

Among the open-ended techniques for identifying differentially expressed genes in response to stress, the PCR-based suppression subtraction hybridization (SSH) is widely used. The popularity of this technique stems from the ease of conducting this procedure in any laboratory set up for basic molecular biology research. Further, the availability of a comprehensive kit for conducting suppression subtractions from BD Biosciences has made this technique easy to adapt and adopt to any biological system. In this chapter we describe in detail the SSH procedure and explain the subtle changes that have been incorporated to make this technique adaptable for identifying stress-responsive genes in plants.