Deconstructing the Polymerase Chain Reaction II: an improved workflow and effects on artifact formation and primer degeneracy

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of complex microbial genomic DNA templates with degenerate primers can lead to distortion of the underlying community structure due to inefficient primer-template interactions leading to bias. We previously described a method of deconstructed PCR (PEX PCR) to separate linear copying and exponential amplification stages of PCR to reduce PCR bias. In this manuscript, we describe an improved deconstructed PCR (DePCR) protocol separating linear and exponential stages of PCR and allowing higher throughput of sample processing. We demonstrate that the new protocol shares the same benefits of the original and show that the protocol dramatically and significantly decreases the formation of chimeric sequences during PCR. By employing PCR with annealing temperature gradients, we further show that there is a strong negative correlation between annealing temperature and the evenness of primer utilization in a complex pool of degenerate primers. Shifting primer utilization patterns mirrored shifts in observed microbial community structure in a complex microbial DNA template. We further employed the DePCR method to amplify the same microbial DNA template independently with each primer variant from a degenerate primer pool. The non-degenerate primers generated a broad range of observed microbial communities, but some were highly similar to communities observed with degenerate primer pools. The same experiment conducted with standard PCR led to consistently divergent observed microbial community structure. The DePCR method is simple to perform, is limited to PCR mixes and cleanup steps, and is recommended for reactions in which degenerate primer pools are used or when mismatches between primers and template are possible.