Overview
Bacterial colonies growing on agar plates are transferred en masse to nitrocellulose filters. The spatial arrangement of colonies on the plates is preserved on the filters. After transfer, the filters are processed for hybridization to an appropriate radiolabeled probe while the original (master) plate is incubated for a few hours to allow the bacterial colonies to regrow in their original positions. This technique, a variant of the Grunstein and Hogness (1975) method, was developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1975. The procedure works best with 90-mm plates containing <2500 colonies. By Joseph Sambrook and David W. Russell.
Details
Details of this protocol, Screening Bacterial Colonies By Hybridization: Intermediate Numbers (Subscription Required), are located on a web site other than Biocompare Protocols.