Digesting Plasmid DNA with Restriction Endonuclease(s) under the Condition of Microwave-heating

During molecular biological experiments,restriction endonuclease-digestion was used frequently,but the digestion reaction normally needs to incubate the mixture in water bath for a long time.The microwave was thought to be able to catalyze restriction endonuclease-digestion and save the incubation time.In this study,we designed a series of experiments to verify whether the microwave really could catalyze the reaction.The results showed that DNA degradation and enzyme inactivation didn't happen when the restriction endonuclease-digestion reaction system was treated by microwave at high temperature for 2 min.For plasmid digestion with one or two restriction endonucleases,treatment by microwave for short time(2 min) could alternate water bath to complete digestion reaction.For some double digestion systems,microwave digestion is not complete and can't substitute for water bath.The digestion time had to control strictly when the microwave was used to catalyze the digestion.