PCR-Directed In Vivo Plasmid Construction Using Homologous Recombination in Baker’s Yeast

Abstract

A variety of applications require the creation of custom-designed plasmids, including transgenic reporters, heterologous gene fusions, and phenotypic rescue plasmids. These plasmids are created traditionally using restriction digests and in vitro ligation reactions, but these techniques are dependent on available restriction sites and can be laborious given the size and number of fragments to be ligated. The baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae provides a powerful platform to create nearly any plasmid through PCR-directed yeast-mediated ligation. This technique can ligate complex plasmids of up to 50 kilobasepairs (kb) in vivo to produce plasmids with precisely defined sequences.