Denaturation 95°C 1 min After 30 cycles of PCR, the final elongation step was carried out again for 10 min at 72°C

The PCRs were normally performed using a PCR amplification kit from Fermentas/Sigma (USA), following the company's protocols. Approximately, 10 ng of chromosomal or 1-2 ng of plasmid DNA was used as template in a 50 μl reaction volume containing 0.2 mMM of each dNTP, 20 picomoles each of forward and reverse primer and 0.5 units of Taq DNA polymerase. In some cases, freshly streaked E.coli cells from a plate were resuspended in 50 μl of sterile Milli Q water to get a cell suspension (~ 109 cells/ml) and 10 μl from this was used as the source of DNA template. The samples were subjected to 30 cycles of amplification and the typical conditions of PCR were as follows (although there were slight modifications from one set of template/primers to another): The initial denaturation was done at 95°C for 3 min and the cycle conditions were as given below. Annealing 55°C 1 min Elongation 72°C (1 min/kb of DNA template to be amplified)