A summary of library screening strategies

A summary of library screening strategies is given below: 

DNA homology: works on all libraries 

Antibody based screening: works on eukaryotic cDNA, prokaryotic cDNA, prokaryotic genomic libraries. 

Obviously, the DNA homology approach to library screening has the most universal application. In some situations however, the geneticist will first discover the protein that is of interest and have an antibody that is specific to the protein. In those situations they will want to make a cDNA library that could have a clone of this gene and then screen the library with their antibody. What if they wanted to study the promoter of this gene? The cDNA clone will lack the promoter so they will need to obtain a genomic clone from a genomic library. How will they screen the library? Once they have the cDNA clone, this clone will have DNA homology to the genomic clone and they can use it to screen their library.

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