Skip to main content
Nucleic Acids Research logoLink to Nucleic Acids Research
. 1997 Oct 1;25(19):3957–3958. doi: 10.1093/nar/25.19.3957

Betaine improves the PCR amplification of GC-rich DNA sequences.

W Henke 1, K Herdel 1, K Jung 1, D Schnorr 1, S A Loening 1
PMCID: PMC146979  PMID: 9380524

Abstract

Betaine improves the co-amplification of the two alternatively spliced variants of the prostate-specific membrane antigen mRNA as well as the amplification of the coding cDNA region of c-jun. It is suggested that betaine improves the amplification of these genes by reducing the formation of secondary structure caused by GC-rich regions and, therefore, may be generally applicable to ameliorate the amplification of GC-rich DNA sequences.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (44.7 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Agarwal R. K., Perl A. PCR amplification of highly GC-rich DNA template after denaturation by NaOH. Nucleic Acids Res. 1993 Nov 11;21(22):5283–5284. doi: 10.1093/nar/21.22.5283. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Barnes W. M. PCR amplification of up to 35-kb DNA with high fidelity and high yield from lambda bacteriophage templates. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1994 Mar 15;91(6):2216–2220. doi: 10.1073/pnas.91.6.2216. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Baskaran N., Kandpal R. P., Bhargava A. K., Glynn M. W., Bale A., Weissman S. M. Uniform amplification of a mixture of deoxyribonucleic acids with varying GC content. Genome Res. 1996 Jul;6(7):633–638. doi: 10.1101/gr.6.7.633. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Hengen P. N. Optimizing multiplex and LA-PCR with betaine. Trends Biochem Sci. 1997 Jun;22(6):225–226. doi: 10.1016/s0968-0004(97)01069-4. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Hite J. M., Eckert K. A., Cheng K. C. Factors affecting fidelity of DNA synthesis during PCR amplification of d(C-A)n.d(G-T)n microsatellite repeats. Nucleic Acids Res. 1996 Jun 15;24(12):2429–2434. doi: 10.1093/nar/24.12.2429. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Mutter G. L., Boynton K. A. PCR bias in amplification of androgen receptor alleles, a trinucleotide repeat marker used in clonality studies. Nucleic Acids Res. 1995 Apr 25;23(8):1411–1418. doi: 10.1093/nar/23.8.1411. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Mytelka D. S., Chamberlin M. J. Analysis and suppression of DNA polymerase pauses associated with a trinucleotide consensus. Nucleic Acids Res. 1996 Jul 15;24(14):2774–2781. doi: 10.1093/nar/24.14.2774. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Rees W. A., Yager T. D., Korte J., von Hippel P. H. Betaine can eliminate the base pair composition dependence of DNA melting. Biochemistry. 1993 Jan 12;32(1):137–144. doi: 10.1021/bi00052a019. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Riedy M. C., Timm E. A., Jr, Stewart C. C. Quantitative RT-PCR for measuring gene expression. Biotechniques. 1995 Jan;18(1):70-4, 76. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Sarkar G., Kapelner S., Sommer S. S. Formamide can dramatically improve the specificity of PCR. Nucleic Acids Res. 1990 Dec 25;18(24):7465–7465. doi: 10.1093/nar/18.24.7465. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Sokolov B. P., Prockop D. J. A rapid and simple PCR-based method for isolation of cDNAs from differentially expressed genes. Nucleic Acids Res. 1994 Sep 25;22(19):4009–4015. doi: 10.1093/nar/22.19.4009. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Su S. L., Huang I. P., Fair W. R., Powell C. T., Heston W. D. Alternatively spliced variants of prostate-specific membrane antigen RNA: ratio of expression as a potential measurement of progression. Cancer Res. 1995 Apr 1;55(7):1441–1443. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Sun Y., Hegamyer G., Colburn N. H. PCR-direct sequencing of a GC-rich region by inclusion of 10% DMSO: application to mouse c-jun. Biotechniques. 1993 Sep;15(3):372–374. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Turner S. L., Jenkins F. J. Use of deoxyinosine in PCR to improve amplification of GC-rich DNA. Biotechniques. 1995 Jul;19(1):48–52. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Nucleic Acids Research are provided here courtesy of Oxford University Press

RESOURCES