An efficient site-directed mutagenesis using polymerase chain reaction

We report here a simple and efficient method for site-directed mutagenesis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In constructing a new expression plasmid for the EcoRI restriction gene, we made two point mutations. While one created a new SalI site prior to the SD sequence, the other replaced Glu144 with Lys. A 1.5 kb SalI-PstI fragment isolated from pER101 was used as the template. Two 25 mer oligonucleotide primers containing the desired mutations were synthesized and used to direct PCR amplification with Taq DNA polymerase. About 0.5 microgram of the 0.49 kb fragment was obtained from 0.05 microgram of the 1.5 kb fragment by carrying out polymerase chain reaction for 30 cycles. As calculated theoretically, 99% of the product contained the desired mutations. The product was cloned into pUC19 using SalI and PstI, two of the transformed colonies were randomly chosen for sequence analysis, and both of them were shown to contain the desired mutations. Finally, the amplified fragment was cloned into pER304 to place the EcoRI (Lys144) gene directly under the control of the lambda PL promoter.