Use of In Vivo Assembly for High-efficiency Plasmid Construction

In vivo assembly (IVA) is a molecular cloning method that uses intrinsic enzymes present in bacteria that promote intermolecular recombination of DNA fragments to assemble plasmids. This method functions by transforming DNA fragments with regions of 15-50 bp of homology into commonly used laboratory Escherichia coli strains and the bacteria use the RecA-independent repair pathway to assemble the DNA fragments into a plasmid. This method is more rapid and cost-effective than many molecular cloning methods that rely on in vitro assembly of plasmids prior to transformation into E. coli strains. This is because in vitro methods require the purchase of specialized enzymes and the performance of sequential enzymatic reactions that require incubations. However, unlike in vitro methods, IVA has not been experimentally shown to assemble linear plasmids. Here we share the IVA protocol used by our laboratory to rapidly assemble plasmids and subclone DNA fragments between plasmids with different origins of replication and antibiotic resistance markers.