Isocaudomer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isocaudomers are pairs of restriction enzymes that have slightly different recognition sequences but upon cleavage generate identical termini. For example the enzymes Mbo I and BamH I are isocaudomers:

Mbo I 
  N*GATCN
  NCTAG*N
BamH I
  G*GATCC
  CCTAG*G

N represents any of the four nucleotides. Independently of which nucleotide is present when cleaving with MboI, after cleavage with either enzyme, all termini have the central tetranucleotide - GATC. This allows fragments generated with one enzyme to anneal with fragments generated with the other enzyme.