Cut My Gene into Pieces– Introduction to Restriction Enzyme Cloning

Cut My Gene into Pieces– Introduction to Restriction Enzyme Cloning

ByNat Graham

At the heart of cloning are restriction enzymes. Restriction enzymes are a common tool in any molecular biology lab. Need to know how large your plasmid is? Cut it with a restriction enzyme. Need to chop your genomic DNA into smaller pieces for a southern hybridization or to prepare a library? Use a restriction enzyme….

Banish the Background with Toxin–antitoxin Cloning Systems

Banish the Background with Toxin–antitoxin Cloning Systems

ByVicki Doronina

One of the most annoying traits of “classical cloning” is an imperfect system of discriminating between the clones containing an empty vector and vector with insert after cloning. Even when your self-ligation control plate is empty, you can have a lot of colonies containing an empty vector on the “vector + insert” plate. Even the blue-white…

Should PCR cloning be a part of your molecular cloning toolkit?

Should PCR cloning be a part of your molecular cloning toolkit?

ByAlex Reis

While the classic approach to molecular cloning – using restriction enzymes to excise a DNA fragment of interest – is as useful as ever, new techniques that make cloning faster, easier and more versatile are available. As a smart molecular biologist, you should be examining each of them to see whether or not adding them…