We examined the effect of silver (I) cation on the thermal stability of heteroduplex and homoduplex. Addition of silver (I) cation increased the melting temperature of heteroduplex containing C:C mismatch base pair by about 3-4 degrees C. The thermal stability of homoduplex and heteroduplexes containing other kinds of mismatch base pairs was not significantly changed by the addition of silver (I) cation. We conclude that silver (I) cation specifically stabilizes heteroduplex containing C:C mismatch base pair. Our results certainly support the idea that the addition of silver (I) cation to C:C mismatch base pair in heteroduplex could be a convenient strategy for heteroduplex analysis and may eventually lead to progress in single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping.