An improved alkaline lysis method for minipreparation of plasmid DNA

This study is to improve the digestion pattern of miniprepped plasmid analyzed on gel. Frequently, some ambiguous DNA bands, which are suspected to be denatured DNA molecules, appear during electrophoresis of enzyme digested miniprepped plasmids. By employing Southern hybridization of two identical gels, one had been treated with denaturation-neutralization step and another without such treatment, we confirmed that many of these ambiguous DNA bands were single-stranded (SS) DNA molecules. The presence of SS DNA was due to the use of excess amount of NaOH during plasmid DNA purification with the conventional alkaline lysis method. We, therefore, modified the procedure and recommend that a half amount of NaOH (0.1N instead of 0.2N) should be used when isolating small quantity of plasmid DNA with the method.