TAIL-PCR to clone flanking sequence from Feldmann's lines


Based on Liu et al, Plant J. 8:457 with modifications

Comments or Questions? Send to me at:chun-mingliu@plant.wag-ur.nl

The first thing you need to do before starting your TAIL-PCR is to figure out which border of the T-DNA is flanking the plant genome, especially with Ken Feldmann's lines since the concatameric nature of the T-DNA inserts. The best way to do that is to follow the procedure designed by Ponce et al, which was published in the Plant Journal [Ponce et al,(1998): Rapid discrimination of sequences flanking and within T-DNA insertions in the Arabidopsis genome. The Plant Journal, 14:497-501.

  • Primer sequences (working dilution: 50uM)
  • T-DNA left border primer sequences (T-DNA left border sequences (working dilution: 50uM)
    1. Genomic DNA extraction (CTAB method was used in my case, but it might be not essential).
    2. Dilute the genomic DNA to 20ng/ul with water.
    3. To ease the pipetting procedure, a PCR stock solution was used (I found both the Perkin-Elmer's and Stratagene's Taq polymerases work very well, in condition of using their own buffers):
    4. Primary reaction mixture for the TAIL-PCR
    5. Dilute the primary reaction product with water to 1/50, then set up the 2nd reaction
    6. Thermo-cyclings: #10 (0.2u. Taq polymerase was added after 4 min denaturation) L #22 L #21 L #53.
    7. Dilute the 2nd PCR product to 1/50 with water, and carry out the tertiary reaction
    8. Thermo-cycling: #10 (0.2ul Taq polymerase was added after 4' denaturation in #10) L #12 L #52 .
    9. 1.5% agarose electrophoresis of all three PCR reaction products.
    10. Purify the PCR products using Pharmacia's Spin-Column S-300.
    11. Cloning PCR product by using Stratagene's PCR polishing kit and pCRScript Amp (SK+) cloning kit or my favorite one-tube cloning method .

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