This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop new thermostable bacteriophage and archaeaviral DNA polymerases for use as improved reagents for DNA amplification, sequence analysis and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection. This will be accomplished by direct isolation of thermophilic bacteriophage and archaeaviral genomes from hot springs, construction of expression libraries and screening for novel thermostable DNA polymerase activities. The proposed approach is expected to be significantly more rapid and comprehensive than traditional approaches that have been used for enzyme discovery. These traditional approaches rely on the limiting intermediate step of culturing a microbe and its cognate virus. In contrast, the proposed approach on this project will allow screening of all expressible viral DNA polymerases present, including those from unculturable phage that is believed to predominate in the environment.
The primary commercial application of this project will be in the marketing of novel thermostable DNA polymerases to organizations involved in genomics research for use as improved reagents for specific molecular biology methods. .
