Journal of Biochemistry Advance Access originally published online on August 24, 2007
Journal of Biochemistry 2007 142(2):283-292; doi:10.1093/jb/mvm137
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© 2007 The Japanese Biochemical Society.
Investigation of the Molecular Mechanism of ICAN, a Novel Gene Amplification Method

1Biotechnology Research Laboratories, Takara Bio Inc., Seta 3-4-1 Otsu, Shiga 520-2193, Japan; and 2Products Development Center, Takara Bio Inc., 2257, Noji, Kusatsu, Shiga 525-0055, Japan
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +81 77-543-7234, Fax: +81 77-543-7295, E-mail: asadak{at}takara-bio.co.jp
Received April 3, 2007; Accepted June 12, 2007
| Abstract |
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Isothermal and Chimeric primer-initiated Amplification of Nucleic acids (ICAN) allows the amplification of target DNA under isothermal conditions at around 55°C using only a pair of 5'-DNA-RNA-3' chimeric primers, thermostable RNaseH and a DNA polymerase with strand-displacing activity (H. Mukai et al. J. Biochemistry, in the preceding paper in this issue). Here we elucidated the mechanism of ICAN by analysing the nicking site of RNaseH, behaviour of chimeric primers and extension products. We found that the ICAN reaction was composed of two unique mechanisms, multi-priming and template-switching, that were responsible for the highly efficient amplifying capability of ICAN. The simultaneous occurrence of two types of reactions, one based on multi-priming and the other based on template-switching, is likely to drive the DNA amplification in ICAN.
Key Words: ICAN, multi-priming, RNaseH, strand displacement, template-switching
Abbreviations: FITC, fluorescein isothiocianate; ICAN, isothermal and chimeric primer-initiated amplification of nucleic acids; ROX, 6-carboxy-X-rhodamine; Tli RNaseH, Thermococcus litoralis RNaseH; XRITC, X-rhodamine isothiocyanate