Taq pol error rates (was Re: Pfu)

[Tracy Aquilla]

In Article <3ffcng$fak at dns1.NMSU.Edu>, smori at nmsu.edu (Shahram Mori) wrote:
>Domingos henrique (D_henrique at icrf.icnet.uk) wrote:
>: Dear netters
>: Can I have the experienced oppinion of someone that uses routinely Pfu
>: polymerase for amplifyng products for cloning. Is it worth to prevent
>: mistakes in the PCR? I want to use the PCR product for cloning and then
>: expression in E.coli and am afraid of mistakes that can result in
>: truncated proteins.
>: Thanks
>: Domingos
>
>How big is the product? Perkin Elmer says that the error rate of regular
>Taq is 1 in 10 000 bp. If you believe them, that's not too many. For some
>reason I thought that the error rate was more than that?
>Cheers
> --
>Shahram Mori                                       _/\_
>Program in Molecular Biology                      _\  /_
>Dept. of chemistry and Biochemistry Box 3C        \_  _/
>NMSU  Las Cruces NM                                 ||
>88003
>
>

The error rate of Taq pol (and the various other polymerases) vary widely
over several orders of magnitude, and are highly dependent on several
variables in the reaction. I guess PE likes to advertise the low end error
rate, obtainable only under highly controlled ideal conditions. YMMV of course.
    Tracy