A universal cloning method based on yeast homologous recombination that is simple, efficient, and versatile

Cloning by homologous recombination (HR) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an extremely efficient and cost-effective alternative to other methods of recombinant DNA technologies. Unfortunately, it is incompatible with all the various specialized plasmids currently used in microbiology and biomedical research laboratories, and is therefore, not widely adopted. In an effort to dramatically improve the versatility of yeast gap-repair cloning and make it compatible with any DNA plasmid, we demonstrate that by simply including a yeast-cloning cassette (YCC) that contains the 2-micron origin of replication (2μm ori) and the ura3 gene for selection, multiple DNA fragments can be assembled into any DNA vector. We show this has almost unlimited potential by building a variety of plasmid for different uses including: recombinant protein production, epitope tagging, site-directed mutagenesis, and expression of fluorescent fusion proteins. We demonstrate the use in a variety of plasmids for use in microbial systems and even demonstrate it can be used in a vertebrate model. This method is remarkably simple and extremely efficient, plus it provides a significant cost saving over commercially available kits.