Construction of in-frame chimeric plant viral genes by simplified PCR strategies

The use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based mutagenesis to create chimeric genes is presently not cost-effective because of the size and number of primers as well as the number of PCRs required. We have developed two strategies based on inverse PCR that exploit limited homologies between two DNA molecules to create in-frame chimeric plant viral genes. This report also contains a compilation of information useful for determining possible restriction sites at a given common dipeptide coding motif between any genes of interest.