EDTA-FISH: A Simple and Effective Approach to Reduce Non-specific Adsorption of Probes in Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH) for Environmental Samples.

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a widely used molecular technique in microbial ecology. However, the non-specific adsorption of fluorescent probes and resulting high intensity of background signals from mineral particles hampers the specific detection of microbial cells in grain-rich environmental samples, such as subseafloor sediments. We herein demonstrated that a new buffer composition containing EDTA efficiently reduced the adsorption of probes without compromising the properties of the FISH-based probing of microbes.