A Simple Enhancement for Gibson Isothermal Assembly

Abstract Gibson Isothermal Assembly has become a widespread cloning method, with a multitude of advantages over traditional cut-and-paste cloning. It allows for scarless assembly of multiple fragments simultaneously and has become widely used for molecular cloning. We have found that a simple change to the formulation of the reaction mix, the addition of a single-stranded DNA binding protein, can substantially improve both the accuracy and efficiency of assembly, especially as the number of fragments being assembled increases. In addition, when creating this Enhanced Gibson Isothermal Assembly reaction mix in-house with homemade DNA ligase, the cost of the reaction can be reduced to less than $10 per milliliter.