Rapid, effective and low-cost purification of dideoxy-sequencing reactions by home-made magnetic beads suspension and magnetic separator

PLoS One. 2022 Dec 22;17(12):e0279432. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279432. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Removal of excess dideoxy terminators from the sequencing mix after the enzymatic reaction is a key process affecting the dideoxy/Sanger sequencing quality. Ethanol precipitation may be the most popular clean-up method because of its low cost; however, it takes a long centrifugation time and frequently results in low quality sequence data. Commercially available clean-up kits provide high quality sequence data, while they generally have high cost. Here, we describe rapid, effective and low-cost dideoxy terminator clean-up method using a home-made magnetic beads suspension, MagNA, and magnetic separator. We found that MagNA enables rapid and efficient clean-up at ~1/100 of the cost of commercially available kits. The magnetic separator made using low-cost neodymium magnets worked well for the MagNA separation, representing a rapid, efficient and cost-effective dideoxy terminator clean-up system.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Base Sequence
  • Magnetic Phenomena
  • Magnetics*
  • Magnets*
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods

Grants and funding

The funders (the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B, 20H02954) to HS) had and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.