A biotechnology company aims to clone a specific human gene for research purposes. They are evaluating whether to use in vitro cloning (via the polymerase chain reaction, PCR) or in vivo cloning (using restriction enzymes, plasmids, and Escherichia coli host cells).
Which of the following statements correctly compares these two cloning methods?
In vitro cloning has a lower risk of contamination than in vivo cloning because the high temperatures used during the PCR cycle denature and destroy any contaminating foreign DNA.
In vivo cloning is highly accurate because the host cell's DNA replication machinery has proofreading mechanisms, whereas standard Taq polymerase used in PCR lacks 3′→5′3' \rightarrow 5'3′→5′ proofreading activity and has a higher error rate.
In vitro cloning requires DNA ligase to catalyze the formation of phosphodiester bonds between the primers and the template DNA strands during the annealing phase.
In vivo cloning is preferred when rapid amplification is required, as the binary fission of bacterial host cells generates copies much faster than the thermal cycling of PCR.
