An approach to the study of eukaryotic structural genes which are differentially expressed during development is described. This approach involves the isolation and amplification of mRNA sequences by in vitro conversion of mRNA to double-stranded cDNA followed by molecular cloning in bacterial plasmids. This procedure provides highly specific hybridization probes that can be used to identify genes and their contiguous DNA sequences in genomic DNA, and to detect specific RNA transcripts during development. The nature of the method allows the isolation of individual mRNA sequences from a complex population of molecules at different stages of development.