Dissecting and tuning primer editing by proofreading polymerases

Proofreading polymerases have 3′ to 5′ exonuclease activity that allows the excision and correction of mis-incorporated bases during DNA replication. In a previous study, we demonstrated that in addition to correcting substitution errors and lowering the error rate of DNA amplification, proofreading polymerases can also edit PCR primers to match template sequences. Primer editing is a feature that can be advantageous in certain experimental contexts, such as amplicon-based microbiome profiling. Here we develop a set of synthetic DNA standards to report on primer editing activity and use these standards to dissect this phenomenon. The primer editing standards allow next-generation sequencing-based enzymological measurements, reveal the extent of editing, and allow the comparison of different polymerases and cycling conditions. We demonstrate that proofreading polymerases edit PCR primers in a concentration-dependent manner, and we examine whether primer editing exhibits any sequence specificity. In addition, we use these standards to show that primer editing is tunable through the incorporation of phosphorothioate linkages. Finally, we demonstrate the ability of primer editing to robustly rescue the drop-out of taxa with 16S rRNA gene-targeting primer mismatches using mock communities and human skin microbiome samples.     

Phosphorothioate primers improve the amplification of DNA sequences by DNA polymerases with proofreading activity.

Two thermostable DNA polymerases with proofreading activity--Vent DNA polymerase and Pfu DNA polymerase--have attracted recent attention, mainly because of their enhanced fidelities during amplification of DNA sequences by the polymerase chain reaction. A severe disadvantage for their practical application, however, results from the observation that due to their 3' to 5' exonuclease activities these enzymes degrade the oligodeoxynucleotides serving as primers for the DNA synthesis. It is demonstrated that this exonucleolytic attack on the primer molecules can be efficiently prevented by the introduction of single phosphorothioate bonds at their 3' termini. This strategy, which can be easily accomplished using routine DNA synthesis methodology, may open the way to a widespread use of these novel enzymes in the polymerase chain reaction.