BioTechniques (Aug 2014)
A strong strand displacement activity of thermostable DNA polymerase markedly improves the results of DNA amplification
Abstract
The sensitivity and robustness of various DNA detection and amplification techniques are to a large extent determined by the properties of the DNA polymerase used. We have compared the performance of conventional Taq and Bst DNA polymerases to a novel Taq DNA polymerase mutant (SD DNA polymerase), which has a strong strand displacement activity, in PCR (including amplification of GC-rich and complex secondary structure templates), long-range PCR (LR PCR), loop-mediated amplification (LAMP), and polymerase chain displacement reaction (PCDR). Our results demonstrate that the strand displacement activity of SD DNA polymerase, in combination with the robust polymerase activity, provides a notable improvement in the sensitivity and efficiency of all these methods.
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