[Water-soluble eumelanin as a PCR-inhibitor and a simple method for its removal]

It has been confirmed that water-soluble eumelanins often extracted together with DNAs from natural black hairs act as an inhibitor of Taq DNA polymerase in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In the present investigation, an attempt to amplify the non-coding 333-bp region of mitochondrial DNA (mt333DNA) produced the following results: 1) Water-soluble preparations made from chemically synthesized melanin (Sigma products), as well as natural black eumelanins, inhibited the PCR amplification of mt333DNA at concentrations of more than 2 micrograms/ml. 2) Quantitative measurement of Taq DNA polymerase-catalyzed DNA synthesis in terms of the amount of [alpha-32P] dCMP incorporated into activated calf thymus DNA showed that both of the water-soluble melanins had the same inhibition activity as represented by the sigmoidal curve derived from a quadratic equation of melanin concentration. This observation suggested that Taq DNA polymerase combined with two molecules of melanin to form an inactivated complex. 3) Melanins did not appear to affect either the thermostability of Taq DNA polymerase at 94 degrees C, or the step of primer-annealing to template DNAs. On the other hand, we established a simple and useful method for removal of water-soluble eumelanins contaminating DNA preparations from hairs. The method was based on the adsorption of melanins to Bio-Gel. When a Bio-Gel P-60 minicolumn was equilibrated with 10 mM sodium acetate buffer, pH 4.2, water-soluble melanins were completely adsorpted to it whereas DNAs passed through, although the melanins showed incomplete adsorption to the gel when it was equilibrated with TE (10 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 0.1 mM EDTA).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)