A flexible, cost- and time-saving method for in-house laboratory production of DNA markers

A DNA marker is routinely used to determine the size of DNA fragments by electrophoresis in molecular biology laboratories. Thus, in-house produced DNA markers could be appropriate for moderately equipped laboratories. We report here a new procedure for customizing fragment sizes of DNA markers and then generating 9 fragments of DNA markers, ranging from 500 to 4600 bp, by partial digestion of the recombinant pSY4.6-1 and pSY4.6-2 plasmids using only one restriction enzyme. DNA markers, containing 9 fragments, were obtained by digesting the recombinant plasmid, which resulted from the commercial cloning pJET1.1 and pJET1.2 plasmids and inserts of 1506 bp or 1628 bp, and one suitable restriction enzyme. Our in-house produced DNA markers, containing desirable fragment sizes, could be suitable for moderately equipped laboratories due to their simplicity, time-saving, and cost-saving procedure (approximately US$5 for materials to produce a DNA marker used for 100 agarose gel lanes) compared to the current ones widely used in most laboratories.