Biologists develop new DNA cloning method

Biologists develop new DNA cloning method

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the molecule which contains all the genetic information of all organisms, and this molecule basically consists of a long chain of some compound known as nucleotides. To study the functions which mainly based on these genetic sequences; the scientists insert DNA molecule fragments in a carrier (known as plasmid – vectors) in order to make multiplication of DNA in a process called dna cloning

Biologists develop new DNA cloning method

And for performing this dna cloning process, some scientists in the University of Bayreuth have developed a new, fast, highly efficient and inexpensive dna cloning method which must be deployed in all biology areas such as biochemistry, biotechnology, …etc.

In all DNA cloning methods, the DNA fragments are carrier molecules (plasmid-vectors) after that, bacteria are made to take up these carriers, and when there is bacterial reproduction and forming colonies, the DNA fragments begin to multiply many times which may be thousands of times, but till now, there are many drawbacks of this traditional dna cloning methods.

So, Prof. Dr. Stefan Schuster and his team at Bayreuth University  have succeeded in discovering a new method in which they used a plasmid contains a toxic gene, and the DNA fragment of interest inserted into this plasmid by replacing this toxic gene, thus, if there is no success in the replacing process; the plasmid will keep its toxic effect.

And if this plasmid is taken up by the bacteria (E.coli); there is interference occurs between the plasmid toxic effect and the bacterial cell division and its ability to form new colonies.

Through this way, there is a guarantee that those E.coli bacteria which contain the DNA fragments will only build colonies, and they won’t have to be selected painstakingly

Dr. David Richter, one of the study teamwork, said that the success and efficacy of this new dna cloning method return to that the selection process of bacteria that contain the cloned DNA fragments occurs by itself and it is very reliable.

Beside the previous features of this novel DNA cloning method; the biologists improved an extract from E.coli bacteria called (SLiCE) for making it exactly suitable as an adhesive material or a glue to link many DNA fragments together, So that, it allows the inserting of DNA fragments combinations into the plasmid which occurs better and more quickly when compared to the previous DNA cloning methods.

What’s the name of this new dna cloning method?

The research team named this novel cloning method ((ZeBRα)), and this name derived from 2 important and decisive factors of this new system which are: 1) The plasmid (Zero-Background vector) and this name means that the bacteria which do not contain DNA fragments won’t form background colonies. 2) the E.coli extract called (Redα-Exonuclease) which meaning that many DNA combinations can be inserted into the vector.

So the name of this new dna cloning system ((ZeBRα)) referred to the red colors in the previous paragraph.

The future of  this dna cloning system

Depending on these amazing results of the study, the scientists seek to provide their cloning vectors with more functions for making it more efficient and useful, especially, their planning to improve the vector ability in the transformation of the cell lines or any organism

And because of this transfer process is a unique and a rare event, it very advantageous and important if this vector can transport these DNA fragments in order to form fluorescent proteins to monitor the transformation process, thus, these proteins will give the ability to indicate the successful uptake the plasmid which carrying the DNA fragments into cells or organisms.

Source

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39768-0

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