Homopolymer primers for amplification of polynucleotides created by enzymatic synthesis

Abstract

This disclosure describes a technique for performing random access in a pool of polynucleotides by using one unique primer and one homopolymer primer to selectively amplify some but not all of the polynucleotides in the pool. The polynucleotides are synthesized by a template independent polymerase such as terminal deoxynucleotide transferase (TdT) rather than by phosphoramidite synthesis. Enzymatic synthesis efficiently creates homopolymer sequences through unregulated synthesis. Use of one homopolymer primer instead of two unique primers decreases the complexity, time, and cost of synthesizing the polynucleotides. Use of a unique primer provides a sequence that can be varied to uniquely identify multiple different groups of polynucleotides. This enables random access by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification while still benefiting from the efficiency of homopolymer synthesis. The polynucleotides may include payload regions that use a sequence of nucleotides to encode digital data.