These added elements are almost always adjacent to the MCS. In addition to these basic features, many commercial plasmids contain one or more features that facilitate cloning, regulate expression of experimental inserts, or add features to expressed RNA or proteins, making them one of the most versatile tools in molecular biology. E.coli that contains a complete, circular plasmid with this gene will make small, isolated, circular colonies on ampicillin-containing, agar plates that can be easily picked and used to produce large amounts of that specific, cloned plasmid. For example, the β-lactamase gene, included in many plasmids, confers resistance to ampicillin.
This enables the small percentage of bacteria that have taken up and copied the transfected plasmid to be selected using agar plates containing the specified antibiotic. Third, plasmids must contain at least one antibiotic resistance gene (AB Resistance). The second is the multiple cloning site (MCS), which contains closely spaced restriction enzyme recognition sequences that occur only in the MCS and can be used to insert one or more pieces of DNA in this region without disrupting the rest of the plasmid structure. coli replication machinery produces these copies with very high fidelity. For example, pUC contains a high copy origin, producing 500–700 copies per cell under ideal conditions. coli is a direct result of the type of origin used. The number of copies of a plasmid produced within a single E. The first required feature is the origin of replication, which recruits endogenous bacterial replication machinery to copy transformed plasmids. A schematic drawing of a basic cloning vector is shown in Figure 2.
coli cells.Īll plasmids must contain three basic features to be useful for cloning. Plasmids are double-stranded, circular, extrachromosomal DNA molecules that contain the necessary DNA elements required for replication in E. Plasmids are one of the most common types of vectors used for amplifying and introducing DNA into cells. The DNA target is ligated to the vector using DNA ligase. The resulting digested DNA target and the nucleotide sequence of the vector are oriented in one direction so that complementary DNA base pairing can occur. The figure shows that restriction enzymes HindIII and KpnI have unique recognition sites in the DNA sequence that creates a short nucleotide sequence overhang. Restriction enzyme digestion, ligation, and DNA base pair complementation result in a recombinant DNA vector.
Below, the method is described in more detail with added tips that further increase its flexibility.įigure 1.
SERIAL CLONER COHESIVE ENDS SERIES
These features make cohesive end cloning a highly useful method for molecular biology.Ĭohesive end restriction cloning can be described in a relatively standard series of steps: The specificity of restriction enzymes enables directional cloning, and the hydrogen bonding of cohesive ends increases the efficiency of cohesive end ligation by as much as 100X over blunt-end ligation. They are referred to as cohesive ends because of the hydrogen bond stabilization of the DNA bases that loosely holds the DNA ends together prior to ligation. Many restriction enzymes produce short, staggered ends (with 5′ or 3′ overhangs) that can be rejoined by a DNA ligase to regenerate the original recognition sequence (Figure 1). Restriction endonucleases recognize and cleave dsDNA at highly specific nucleotide sequences, or restriction sites. The purpose of this article is to discuss cohesive end cloning-one method by which DNA fragments can be inserted into a plasmid vector using restriction digestion. The procedure is used for sequencing, building libraries of DNA molecules, expressing coding and non-coding RNA, and many other applications. Target Capture Probe Design & Ordering ToolĬloning of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) molecules into plasmid vectors is a commonly employed molecular biology technique.Library Concentration Conversion Calculator.Alt-R Predesigned Cas9 crRNA Selection Tool.