Overhang A of PCR

[Paul N Hengen]

Dr. Duncan Clark (duncan at genesys.demon.co.uk) wrote:

: There was a paper publsihed in Biotechniques in Vol 20 No. 6, pp1004-10
: that investigated primer design and addition of 'A's. They found that
: Taq prefers to add a terminal base adjacent to a C  ie a 5'G on your
: primers. Having a 5' T on the primers pretty much stops the terminal
: base addition.
: 
: Placing the sequence GTTTCTT at the 5' end of primers resulted in nearly
: 100% addition of a single A. They called it PIG-tailing!

And just for trivia sake, the PIG is not notorius PIG ;-)
It stands for Prostate Investigation Group (Doh!)

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