Introduction of 3-9 dInosines in the probe resulted in only a small reduction in MFI when binding to the InflA target; i.e. the MFI signal decreased in the order InflA probe & Ino3 > Ino5 > Ino7 > Ino9. The Ino9 probe hybridized with the InflA target by as much as 76% (MFI 4970, 45 C) and 59% (MFI 3340, 55 C) of the total MFI, comparable with the hybridization of the InflA probe to the 9-pm target. In fact, all the Ino3-9 probes hybridized as efficiently with targets that had up to the same number of pm as the number of dInosines, including two mismatches not covered by dInosines, as they did with the InflA target. When the Ino probes hybridized with targets containing more than 12 pm, the probes with many dInosines worked better than the InflA probe; e.g. the Ino7 and Ino9 probes resulted in a signal 1.2-1.9 times higher than that for the InflA probe for targets with 13-16 pm at 45 C.