Patent ID: 7893016

Claim:
A method for increasing the yield of a nucleic acid duplex during purification process, comprising the step of contacting a nucleic acid duplex with a composition which comprises divalent cations and a purified ubiquitin-like protein, wherein: a) the ubiquitin-like protein comprises the following amino acid sequence (SEQ ID NO: 1): KXXX 1 XX 2 XXXX 3 X 4 XXXQXX 5 X 6 X 7 XGXXXXX 8 wherein X is any amino acid, X 1 , X 3 , and X 5 are each independently selected from L, I, V or M, X 2 is D, E, S, A or K, X 4 is P or A, X 6 is L, I, V, M or C, X 7 is L, I, V, M, F or Y, and X 8 is D or E; and b) the ubiquitin-like protein is selected from the group consisting of a fusion protein, a tandem repeat protein, a precursor, a mature protein, glycosylated, unglycosylated, methylated, labeled, and with or without N-terminal methionine provided that duplex stabilization activity is retained.