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Every few months we highlight a subset of the new plasmids and viral preps in the repository through our hot plasmids articles. These articles provide brief summaries of recent plasmid deposits and we hope they'll make it easier for you to find and use the plasmids you need. If you'd ever like to write about a recent plasmid deposit please sign up here. 

Here's what you'll find in this post:

• Yeast-based protein evolution
• Fluorescent tools for mammalian cells
• Nanobody purification
• CRISPRi and CRISPRa system for hPSCs
• The CRISPR corner
• New from the viral service

What if after ordering a plasmid you didn't have to grow the bacteria and prep the plasmid before you begin your cloning experiment? What if after receiving the plasmid from Addgene you could directly start your digest, PCR, or transformation? 

Great news. A subset of our collection has been prepared as part of our new cloning grade DNA service and is ready to use out of the box.

We estimate that providing cloning grade DNA could save scientists up to three days of work. We’ve taken care of all the steps going from streaking to a single colony to DNA extraction and quantification so that you can focus on what you want to do with your plasmid without spending time and resources in preparative experiments. 

We’re excited to begin offering this service to further contribute to our mission to “accelerate research and discovery.”

Here are the details.

You’ve prepped your DNA and you’re ready to get started on the next step of your experiment. But in many cases, you won’t see any signs of DNA in your final tube after purification. How do you know if you actually have DNA in your tube without seeing it?

There are many ways to do this and the method you choose could be based on your downstream application, time, and instrument availability.

Nanobodies from camelids have gotten a lot of press for being a promising approach for treatment or prophylaxis of COVID-19. Researchers identified nanobodies that bind to coronavirus spike proteins (Wrapp et al., 2020), which sit on the surface of coronaviruses and enable the virus to enter host cells. To do this, they injected the spike protein from two different coronaviruses into a llama over several days and isolated special camelid antibodies that bind to the spike proteins in cell culture, and inhibit these viruses. 

Not all plasmid preps are the same. Before purifying a plasmid from a bacterial culture, it is important to consider your experiment.  It will dictate the amount of DNA you need, and at which level of purity. Based on these premises we can classify a plasmid preparation in 3 different ways:

• Transformation grade DNA
• Cloning grade DNA
• Transfection grade DNA