Pont New England Nuclear (Boston, MA). KF (exo–), EcoRV restriction endonuclease, T4 DNA ligase, T4 polynucleotide
kinase, uracil DNA glycosylase, exonuclease III, Dnase I, and Rnase
TI were obtained from New England Bioloabs (Beverly, MA). S-cdA-cyanoethyl phosphoramidite was purchased from Berry
and Associates (Dexter, MI). pMS2 plasmid and Dpo4 were gifts from
M. Moriya (SUNY, Stony Brook, NY) and Z. Suo (Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH), respectively.
The E. coli strains
used were AB1157 [F–thr-1araC14leuB6(Am) Δ(gpt-proA)62lacY1 tsx-33 supE44(AS) galK2(Oc) hisG4(Oc) rfbD1mgl51rpoS396(Am) rpsL31(Strr) kdgK51xylA5mtl-1argE3(Oc) thi-1], pol II– (AB1157 but polBΔ1::Ω
Sm-Sp), pol IV– (AB1157 but ΔdinBW2::cat), GW8017 (AB1157 but umuDC595::cat), and pol
II–/pol IV–/pol V– (AB1157 but polBΔ1::Ω
Sm-Sp dinB umuDC595::cat). All E. coli strains were provided by G. Walker (MIT, Cambridge, MA).