A new method for labeling oligonucleotides was developed to obtain high specific activity of radioactive probes. In an oligonucleotide molecule, two sequences were designed. One sequence, the 5', contains 19 nucleotides and serves as a template for probe synthesis. The second sequence, 3', contains a consensus sequence which forms a Pst I site after forming a complementary strand with the primer. In the presence of E. coli DNA polymerase I (Klenow fragment), alpha-32P dNTP and other dNTPs, a radioactive labeled oligonucleotide was synthesized by the primer extension method. After Pst I digestion, the probe was different from its template in length by 4 bp and could be separated from each other on urea-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). A radioactive oligonucleotide probe with extremely high specific activity up to 10(10) dpm/micrograms could be obtained by the use of this method. The oligonucleotide probes have been used for the detection of the Hb E mutation in this report.