An Efficient Approach for Two Distal Point Site-Directed Mutagenesis from Randomly Ligated PCR Products

Abstract

Site-directed mutagenesis is one of the most important tools in molecular biology. The majority of the mutagenesis methods have been developed to mutate one region of target DNA in each cycle of mutagenesis, while in some cases there is a need to mutate several distal points. We used a new method to simultaneously mutate two distal points in the target DNA. Different regions of the target DNA were amplified in three separate PCR reactions. The PCR products were back-to-back and together they made the complete length of the template DNA. Mutations were introduced to PCR products by middle mutagenic primers. PCR products were mixed and ligated with random blunt ligation, and then the desired mutated DNA fragments were selected in two steps by flanking restriction enzyme digestion and size selection. Selected fragments were amplified in another PCR reaction using flanking primers and finally cloned into the plasmid vector. This mutagenesis process is simple, there is no need to use modified primers and long or difficult PCR reactions.

Keywords: PCR; Random ligation; Site-directed mutagenesis.