Patent ID: 7022477

Claim:
A process for detecting complementary nucleic acid fragments which comprises the steps of: preparing a composite material sheet, wherein said composite material sheet comprises partitions two-dimensionally extending on a sheet plane to form 10 to 10,000 per cm 2 fine sections on the sheet plane, and a porous material portion placed in each fine section, wherein a group of single-stranded probe nucleic acid fragments are attached to each porous material portion; bringing radioactively labeled single-stranded sample nucleic acid fragments in a liquid phase, into contact with the prepared composite material sheet, whereby single-stranded target nucleic acid fragments amoung the sample nucleic acid fragments are fixed by hybridization to probe nucleic acid fragments; removing unfixed sample nucleic acid fragments from the composite material sheet; placing the composite material sheet having target nucleic acid fragments fixed by hybridization in contact with a stimulable phosphor sheet, wherein the stimulable phosphor sheet comprises a support and fine stimulable phosphor layers distributed on the support in such manner that each stimulable phosphor layer takes a position corresponding to each fine section of the composite material sheet, whereby the stimulable phosphor layers absorb and store radiation energy of the radioactive label coming from the fixed nucleic acid fragments; irradiating the stimulable phosphor sheet with a stimulating light, whereby the stimulable phosphor layers storing the radiation energy release stimulated emissions; detecting the stimulated emissions photoelectrically to obtain a series of electric signals; and processing the electric signals to detect areas in which the target nucleic acid fragments are fixed.