MAX Efficiency™ Stbl2™ Competent Cells

If the insert is potentially toxic to the host cells, here are some suggestions that you can try:

- After transforming TOP10 or DH5? cells, incubate at 25-30°C instead of 37°C. This will slow down the growth and will increase the chances of cloning a potentially toxic insert.
- Try using TOP10F' cells for the transformation, but do not add IPTG to the plates. These cells carry the lacIq repressor that represses expression from the lac promoter and so allows cloning of toxic genes. Keep in mind that in the absence of IPTG, blue-white screening cannot be performed.
- Try using Stbl2 cells for the transformation.

For best results, DNA used in electroporation must have a very low ionic strength and a high resistance. A high-salt DNA sample may be purified by either ethanol precipitation or dialysis.

The following suggested protocols are for ligation reactions of 20ul. The volumes may be adjusted to suit the amount being prepared.

Purifying DNA by Precipitation: Add 5 to 10 ug of tRNA to a 20ul ligation reaction. Adjust the solution to 2.5 M in ammonium acetate using a 7.5 M ammonium acetate stock solution. Mix well. Add two volumes of 100 % ethanol. Centrifuge at 12,000 x g for 15 min at 4C. Remove the supernatant with a micropipet. Wash the pellet with 60ul of 70% ethanol. Centrifuge at 12,000 x g for 15 min at room temperature. Remove the supernatant with a micropipet. Air dry the pellet. Resuspend the DNA in 0.5X TE buffer [5 mM Tris-HCl, 0.5 mM EDTA (pH 7.5)] to a concentration of 10 ng/ul of DNA. Use 1 ul per transformation of 20 ul of cell suspension.

Purifying DNA by Microdialysis: Float a Millipore filter, type VS 0.025 um, on a pool of 0.5X TE buffer (or 10% glycerol) in a small plastic container. Place 20ul of the DNA solution as a drop on top of the filter. Incubate at room temperature for several hours. Withdraw the DNA drop from the filter and place it in a polypropylene microcentrifuge tube. Use 1ul of this DNA for each electrotransformation reaction.

There are a few exceptions, but in general the difference is in guaranteed transformation efficiency as follows:

Subcloning Efficiency cells are guaranteed to produce at least 1.0 x 10E6 transformants per µg of transformed pUC19 or pUC18 supercoiled plasmid
Library Efficiency cells are guaranteed to produce at least 1.0 x 10E8 transformants per µg pUC19 or pUC18 DNA
MAX Efficiency cells are guaranteed to produce at least 1.0 x 10E9 transformants per µg pUC19 or pUC18 DNA

The first thing you can do is to lower the growth temperature of your E. coli cells when propagating your plasmid containing the unstable gene. Slowing the growth of any cell strain at 30C, 25C or even lower can help to stabilize the replication of the plasmids they contain.

If your sequence is still unstable despite low-temperature growth, there are also specific bacterial strains available that can further help to stabilize repeated sequences during propagation. Invitrogen Stbl2 and Stbl4 competent cells are both designed to improve stability when cloning retroviral or direct repeat sequences.

In a series of experiments, Stbl2 was compared directly to several other strains also known for increasing stability of retroviral and tandem repeat inserts. An article in the Focus Journal (Issue 16.3, p. 78) contains data from two such experiments – the full article can be found on the Thermo Fisher Scientific website. A brief summary of the data is included below:

Stability of clones containing SIV retroviral sequences:
Stbl2 @ 30°C - 100%; Stbl2 @ 37°C - 100%; HB101 @ 30°C - 100%; HB101 @ 37°C - 100%; SURE @ 30°C - 72%; SURE @ 37°C - 0%

Stability of clones containing 100 repeats of a 32-bp sequence:
Stbl2 @ 30°C - 89%; Stbl2 @ 37°C - 73%; HB101 @ 30°C - 15%; HB101 @ 37°C - 0%; SURE @ 30°C - 53%; SURE @ 37°C - 0%

Results from a separate experiment on stability of a tandem repeat of four R67 dihydrofolate reductase genes in Stbl2 vs. SURE cells can be found in Focus 19.2, p. 24 on the Thermo Fisher Scientific website.

Yes, several of our competent cells products are frozen with DMSO. The presence of DMSO (dimethylsulfoxide) will generally be indicated in the MSDS files if you have a question about a particular product, but here is a list of commonly used products that are known to have DMSO in the freezing buffer:

One Shot OmniMAX 2 T1 Phage Resistant Cells, Cat. No. C8540-03

One Shot INV?F' Chemically Competent Cells, Cat. No. C2020-03 and C2020-06

One Shot MAX Efficiency DH5?-T1 Chemically Competent Cells, Cat. No. 12297-016

MAX Efficiency DH5?-T1 Phage Resistant Cells, Cat. No. 12034-013

MAX Efficiency DH5? Chemically Competent Cells, Cat. No. 18258-012

Library Efficiency DH5? Chemically Competent Cells, Cat. No. 18263-012

MAX Efficiency DH5? F'IQ Cells, Cat. No. 18288-019

MAX Efficiency Stbl2Chemically Competent Cells, Cat. No. 10268-019