Subtractive hybridization (SSH) is a technique for identifying differentially expressed genes between two populations of nucleic acids. It involves two hybridizations - in the first, an excess of driver cDNA is added to normalize the tester cDNA. In the second hybridization, the normalized cDNA is mixed with more driver cDNA to selectively amplify sequences present in the tester but not driver (E-hybrids). Only the E-hybrids can be exponentially amplified due to their different adapter sequences, allowing isolation of differentially expressed genes between populations. SSH is commonly used for plant and cancer research and to study various diseases.