title: COLD-PCR enriches low-level variant DNA sequences and increases the sensitivity of genetic testing.
abstract: Detection of low-level mutations is important for cancer biomarker and therapy targets discovery, but reliable detection remains a technical challenge. The newly developed method of CO-amplification at Lower Denaturation temperature PCR (COLD-PCR) helps to circumvent this issue. This PCR-based technology preferentially enriches minor known or unknown variants present in samples with a high background of wild type DNA which often hampers the accurate identification of these minority alleles. This is a simple process that consists of lowering the temperature at the denaturation step during the PCR-cycling protocol (critical denaturation temperature, T c) and inducing DNA heteroduplexing during an intermediate step. COLD-PCR in its simplest forms does not need additional reagents or specific instrumentation and thus, can easily replace conventional PCR and at the same time improve the mutation detection sensitivity limit of downstream technologies. COLD-PCR can be applied in two basic formats: fast-COLD-PCR that can enrich T m-reducing mutations and full-COLD-PCR that can enrich all mutations, though it requires an intermediate cross-hybridization step that lengthens the thermocycling program. An improved version of full-COLD-PCR (improved and complete enrichment, ice-COLD-PCR) has also been described. Finally, most recently, we developed yet another form of COLD-PCR, temperature-tolerant-COLD-PCR, which gradually increases the denaturation temperature during the COLD-PCR reaction, enriching diverse targets using a single cycling program. This report describes practical considerations for application of fast-, full-, ice-, and temperature-tolerant-COLD-PCR for enrichment of mutations prior to downstream screening.
authors.affiliation: Division of DNA Repair and Genome Stability, Department of Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Castellanos-Rizaldos
authors.forename: Coren A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Milbury
authors.forename: Minakshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guha
authors.forename: G Mike
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Makrigiorgos
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D003080:Cold Temperature; D005820:Genetic Testing / Q000379:methods*; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007202:Indicators and Reagents; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009691:Nucleic Acid Denaturation / Q000235:genetics; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D007202:Indicators and Reagents