Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Libraries of cDNA clones are valuable resources for analysing the expression, structure, and regulation of genes, as well as for studying protein functions and interactions. Full-length cDNA clones provide information about intron and exon structures, splice junctions and 5'- and 3'-untranslated regions (UTRs). Open reading frames (ORFs) derived from cDNA clones can be used to generate constructs allowing expression of native proteins and N- or C-terminally tagged proteins. Thus, obtaining full-length cDNA clones and sequences for most or all genes in an organism is critical for understanding genome functions. Expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing samples cDNA libraries at random, which is most useful at the beginning of large-scale screening projects. However, as projects progress towards completion, the probability of identifying unique cDNAs via EST sequencing diminishes, resulting in poor recovery of rare transcripts. We describe an adapted, high-throughput protocol intended for recovery of specific, full-length clones from plasmid cDNA libraries in five days.