Pwo DNA polymerase

See also: Taq polymerase, Pfu DNA polymerase, Vent DNA polymerase, and Variants of PCR

Pwo polymerase is a thermostable DNA polymerase used for the polymerase chain reaction. The abbreviation stands for Pyrococcus woesei, a thermophilic archaeon, from which this polymerase was isolated. This polymerase breaks when reaching erroneous uracil in DNA from the chain extension and, through this readahead function, fewer defective DNA clones are synthesized. It is used much less than the usual Taq or Pfu polymerases.^[1] This DNA polymerase, similar to other DNA polymerases from Archaebacteria is sensitive to Uracil residues in DNA and is strongly inhibited by dUTP or uracil residues in DNA. Other polymerases in this class are Pfu, Vent , Deep Vent and Pfx.^[2] The inhibition of this class of thermostable DNA polymerases limit their use in some applications of PCR, i.e. use of dUTP for prevention of carryover contamination as well as application involving dU containing primers such as ligase free cloning methods or site directed mutagenesis using UNG.^[3]

DNA polymerase
Identifiers
Organism	Pyrococcus woesei
Symbol	pol
UniProt	P61876
Search for Structures Swiss-model Domains InterPro

References

1. Ghasemi A, Salmanian AH, Sadeghifard N, Salarian AA, Gholi MK (September 2011). "Cloning, expression and purification of Pwo polymerase from Pyrococcus woesei". Iranian Journal of Microbiology. 3 (3): 118–22. PMC 3279813. PMID 22347593.
2. Lasken RS, Schuster DM, Rashtchian A (July 1996). "Archaebacterial DNA polymerases tightly bind uracil-containing DNA". The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 271 (30): 17692–6. doi:10.1074/jbc.271.30.17692. PMID 8663453.
3. Rashtchian A, Thornton CG, Heidecker G (November 1992). "A novel method for site-directed mutagenesis using PCR and uracil DNA glycosylase". PCR Methods and Applications. 2 (2): 124–30. doi:10.1101/gr.2.2.124. PMID 1477668.