Seamless site-directed mutagenesis in complex cloned DNA sequences using the RedEx method

Seamless site-directed mutagenesis is an important technique for studying protein functions, tuning enzyme catalytic activities and modifying genetic elements in multiple rounds because it can insert, delete or substitute nucleotides, DNA segments or even entire genes at the target site without introducing any unwanted change. To facilitate seamless site-directed mutagenesis in large plasmids and bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) with repetitive sequences, we recently developed the RedEx strategy. Compared with previous methods, our approach achieves the recovery of correct recombinants with high accuracy by circumventing unwanted recombination between repetitive sequences. RedEx readily yields more than 80% accuracy in seamless DNA insertion and deletion in large multimodular polyketide synthase gene clusters, which are among the most difficult targets due to the large number of repetitive DNA sequences in modules encoding almost identical enzymes. Here we present the RedEx method by describing in detail the seamless site-directed mutagenesis in a BAC vector. Overall, the process includes three parts: (1) insertion of the RedEx cassette containing the desired mutation together with selection–counterselection markers flanked by unique restriction sites and 20-bp overlapping sequences into the target site by recombineering, (2) removal of the selection–counterselection markers in the BAC by restriction digestion and (3) circularization of the linear BAC by exonuclease-mediated in vitro DNA annealing. This protocol can be performed within 3 weeks and will enable researchers with DNA cloning experience to master seamless site-directed mutagenesis to accelerate their research. RedEx achieves seamless genetic modification of large, highly repetitive, DNA targets by combining Redαβ-mediated linear–circular homologous recombination, ccdB counterselection and exonuclease-mediated in vitro annealing.