A Digital PCR Method Based on Highly Specific Taq for Detecting Gene Editing and Mutations

Abstract

Digital PCR (dPCR) has great potential for assessing gene editing or gene mutation due to its ability to independently inspect each DNA template in parallel. However, current dPCR methods use a fluorescence-labeled probe to detect gene variation events, and their ability to distinguish variated sequences from the wild-type sequence is limited by the probe’s tolerance to mismatch. To address this, we have developed a novel dPCR method that uses a primer instead of a probe to sense gene variation. The enhanced Taq DNA polymerase in the PCR system has a high mismatch sensitivity, which enables our dPCR method to distinguish gene mutations from wild-type sequences. Compared to current dPCR methods, our method shows superior precision in assessing gene editing efficiency and single-base DNA mutation. This presents a promising opportunity to advance gene editing research and rare gene mutation detection.