Single primer-mediated circular polymerase chain reaction for hairpin DNA cloning and plasmid editing.

We developed and validated a universal polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, single primer circular (SPC)-PCR, using single primer to simultaneously insert and amplify a short hairpin sequence into a vector with a high success rate. In this method, the hairpin structure is divided into two parts and fused into a vector by PCR. Then, a single primer is used to cyclize the chimera into a mature short hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression vector. It is not biased by loop length or palindromic structures. Six hairpin DNAs with short 4-nucleotide loops were successfully cloned. Moreover, SPC-PCR was also applied to plasmid editing within 3 h with a success rate higher than 95%.