Plasmids are an indispensable tool that are used to clone, transfer, and manipulate genes. These small, circular fragments of DNA are typically found in bacteria but are also present in some archaea and eukaryotes. They carry only a few genes which makes them easy to genetically modify.

Now that you have your purified plasmid, you will need to get an idea of its quality. Transfection efficiency is highly influenced by the quality of the plasmid, so it’s important to get a full picture. There are a few factors to plasmid quality, and you will want to look at all of them to make sure your samples will be successful in your downstream processing. Here, I will explain how to measure the absorbance ratios of your sample, successfully read an agarose gel, and the importance of low endotoxin values.

Gene therapy has had its share of setbacks, but finally gene therapies are proving successful at treating diseases like neuromuscular disorders, cancer and blindness. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) has emerged as a leading gene delivery vehicle because it is efficient and has demonstrated safety in humans.

Successful transient transfection relies on many factors, starting with a successful plasmid prep. To ensure high transfection efficiency, resulting DNA from your plasmid preps must be transfection grade. But what does transfection grade really mean?

Plasmids are one of the cornerstones of modern biology, providing the foundation for several areas of important research including DNA vaccines, mRNA vaccines, viral vectors, and monoclonal antibodies. This small, circular DNA is found in bacterial cells and is used widely as a vector for specific DNA fragments across multiple fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, and cell biology. Plasmid purification, therefore, has a wide range of applications and its importance is reflected in recent scientific triumphs including the development of COVID-19 vaccines and advancements in gene and cell therapies.

One of the biggest challenges with automated plasmid purification is with culture growth conditions, leading to low yielding cultures. Many times, culture growth is unpredictable and hard to perfect. Large volume culture growth is an additional struggle. But it’s important to optimize your culture growth, because when your culture growth conditions are reliable, your downstream processing will be more successful and higher yielding. Here are a couple recommendations for successful large scale culture growth.

As the throughput in the drug discovery process of large molecules have, in recent years, become considerably more high throughput many are looking for ways to automate their sample management.