Patent ID: 7879582

Claim:
A method for the recombination of a double stranded first nucleic acid template and a double stranded second nucleic acid template wherein the method comprises: a) providing the double-stranded first nucleic acid template with the second double-stranded nucleic acid template, wherein the first and the second double-stranded nucleic acid templates have at least 50% identity to each other, wherein the 5′ end of the sense strand of the first nucleic acid template is of different sequence than the 5′ end of the sense strand of the second nucleic acid template and the 3′ end of the sense strand of the first nucleic acid template is of different sequence than the 3′ end of the sense strand of the second nucleic acid template, and wherein each of the 5′ ends and the 3′ ends of the sense strands of the first and the second nucleic acid templates are between 6 to 200 nucleotides in length; b) providing a forward primer that will only anneal to the 3′ end of the antisense strand of the first nucleic acid template; c) providing a reverse primer that will only anneal to the 3′ end of the sense strand of the second nucleic acid template; d) contacting the first and the second nucleic acid templates of (a) with the primers of (b) and (c) in a replication composition whereby a short, abbreviated primer directed extension of the primers is conducted; e) terminating the extension of the primers of (d) after the addition of no more than about 1000 nucleotides; f) separating the extended forward and reverse primers from the first and the second nucleic acid templates; g) re-annealing the extended forward and reverse primers with the first and the second nucleic acid templates at low annealing temperatures whereby the extended primers anneal to either the first or the second nucleic acid template in a second replication composition whereby short, abbreviated primer-directed extension is conducted; and h) repeating steps (e)-(g) until at least one full-length extension product is generated comprising the recombination of the first and the second double stranded nucleic acid templates.