New insights into the QuikChangeTM process guide the use of Phusion DNA polymerase for site-directed mutagenesis

The QuikChange™ site-directed mutagenesis method is popular but imperfect. An improvement by using partially overlapping primers has been reported several times; however, it is incompatible with the proposed mechanism. The QuikChange™ method using complementary primers is proposed to linearly amplify a target plasmid with the products annealing to produce double-stranded DNA molecules with 5'-overhangs. The overhang annealing is supposed to form circular plasmids with staggered breaks, which can be repaired in Escherichia coli after transformation. Here, we demonstrated that the PCR enzyme fills the 5'-overhangs in the early cycles, and the product is then used as the template for exponential amplification. The linear DNA molecules with homologous ends are joined to generate the plasmid with the desired mutations through homologous recombination in E. coli. The correct understanding is important to method improvements, guiding us to use partially overlapping primers and Phusion DNA polymerase for site-directed mutagenesis. Phusion did not amplify a plasmid with complementary primers but used partially overlapping primers to amplify the plasmid, producing linear DNA molecules with homologous ends for site-directed mutagenesis.