The use of phosphorothioate primers and exonuclease hydrolysis for the preparation of single-stranded PCR products and their detection by solid-phase hybridization.

The effect of phosphorothioate bonds on the hydrolytic activity of the 5'-->3' double-strand-specific T7 gene 6 exonuclease was studied. Double-stranded DNA substrates containing one phosphorothioate residue at the 5' end were found to be hydrolyzed by this enzyme as efficiently as unmodified ones. The enzyme activity was, however, completely inhibited by the presence of four phosphorothioates. On the basis of these results, a method for the conversion of double-stranded PCR products into full-length, single-stranded DNA fragments was developed. In this method, one of the PCR primers contains four phosphorothioates at its 5' end, and the opposite strand primer is unmodified. Following the amplification, the double-stranded product is treated with T7 gene 6 exonuclease. The phosphorothioated strand is protected from the action of this enzyme, whereas the opposite strand is hydrolyzed. When the phosphorothioated PCR primer is 5' biotinylated, the single-stranded PCR product can be easily detected colorimetrically after hybridization to an oligonucleotide probe immobilized on a microtiter plate. We also describe a simple and efficient method for the immobilization of relatively short oligonucleotides to microtiter plates with a hydrophilic surface in the presence of salt.