Patent ID: 6872552

Claim:
A method of reconstituting a degraded nucleic molecule from a first organism comprising steps of: a) providing a sample comprising fragments of the degraded nucleic acid molecule, wherein, prior to being degraded, the nucleic acid molecule was double-stranded and the sample comprises fragments of each strand; b) providing a nucleic acid template comprising at least one strand of a nucleic acid molecule from a second organism, which second organism is sufficiently genetically related to the first organism that the template hybridizes with fragments of one strand of the degraded nucleic acid molecule; c) admixing the fragments and the template under conditions such that appropriate fragments hybridize to the template; d) contacting the hybridized nucleic acids from step c) with nucleotide precursors and an appropriate polymerizing and ligating enzyme or enzymes such that the hybridized fragments are extended and a product strand is synthesized, which product strand consists of the hybridized fragments linked to one another via extended nucleotides complementary to the template; e) isolating the product strand; f) performing steps a) through f) using the isolated product strand from step e) as a new template strand; and g) repeating steps a) through f) until the nucleotide sequence of the product strand produced in step d) is substantially identical to the nucleotide sequence of the strand produced in a second previous execution of steps a) through f).