Estimated time: 3 hours (plus 14-18 hour incubation)

Materials

1. Thaw competent cells on ice.
2. Add 50µL of thawed competent cells into pre-chilled 2ml tube.
3. Add 2µL of resuspended DNA to the 2ml tube. Pipet up and down a few times, gently. Keep the competent cells on ice.
4. Close tubes and incubate the cells on ice for 30 minutes.
5. Heat shock the cells by immersion in a pre-heated water bath at 42ºC for 60 seconds.
6. Incubate the cells on ice for 5 minutes.
7. Add 200 μl of SOC or LB media to each transformation
8. Incubate the cells at 37ºC for 2 hours at 260rpm in the shaker.
9. Label petri dishes with the appropriate antibiotic with the part number, plasmid backbone, antibiotic resistance, and date. Plate 200 µl of the transformation onto the labeled antibiotic dishes, and spread. This helps ensure that you will be able to pick out a single colony.
10. Spread remaining transformation onto labeled LB agar plate and spread, approx 50µl.
11. Incubate the plates at 37ºC for 12-18 hours, making sure the agar side of the plate is up. If incubated for too long the antibiotics start to break down and un-transformed cells will begin to grow. This is especially true for ampicillin - because the resistance enzyme is excreted by the bacteria, and inactivates the antibiotic outside of the bacteria.
12. You can pick a single colony, make a glycerol stock, grow up a cell culture and miniprep.

Estimated time

Materials

Procedure

1. Harvest the bacterial culture by centrifugation for 1 min at 10,000 rpm. Pour off the supernatant and blot the inverted tube on a paper towel to remove residue medium. Remove the residue medium completely.
2. Add 250 µL Buffer A1 (Add RNase A to Buffer A1 before use) and completely resuspend bacterial pellet by vortexing or pipetting
3. Add 250 µL Buffer B1, mix gently by inverting the tube 10 times (do not vortex), and incubate at room temperature for 5 minutes.
4. Add 350 µL Buffer N1, mix completely by inverting/shaking the vial for 5 times and sharp hand shaking for 2 times.
   Note: Incubating the lysate in ice for 1 min will improve the yield.
5. Centrifuge the lysate at 13,000 rpm for 10 minutes at room temperature. If the lysate doesn’t appear clean, reverse the tube angle, centrifuge for 5 more minutes and then transfer the clear lysate to DNA column.
6. Carefully transfer the clear lysate into a DNA column with a collection tube, avoid the precipitations, spin at 13,000 rpm for 1 minute, discard the flow-through and put the column back to the collection tube.
7. Add 500 µL Buffer KB into the spin column, centrifuge at 13,000 rpm for 1 minute. Remove the spin column from the tube and discard the flow-through. Put the column back to the collection tube.
8. Add 650 µL DNA Wash Buffer (Add ethanol to DNA wash buffer before use) into the spin column, centrifuge at 13,000 rpm for 1 minute at room temperature. Remove the spin column from the tube and discard the flowthrough.
9. Reinsert the spin column, with the lid open, into the collection tube and centrifuge for 2 minutes at 13,000 rpm.
10. Carefully transfer the spin column into a sterile 1.5 mL tube and add 50-100 µL (> 50 µL) Sterile ddH20 or Elution Buffer into the center of the column and let it stand for 2 minutes. Elute the DNA by centrifugation at 13,000 rpm for 1 minute. Reload the eluate into the column and elute again.
11. Check results on Nanodrop.

Link to NEB Protocol

To determine buffer for double digests

Guide to heat inactivation

General reaction set-up:

Estimated time:

Materials
MinElute Midi Gel Extraction Kit
Procedure

1. Pre-weigh a 2.0mL microcentrifuge tube
2. Excise DNA fragment from agarose gel with clean, sharp scalpel. Place in the pre-weighed microcentrifuge tube. Minimize the exposure of the DNA samples under UV and amount of gel cut with DNA.
3. Weigh the tube and calculate the weight of the gel. For every 1 volume of gel (100mg = 100µl) add 3 times the volume of Buffer QG. The maximum amount of gel slice per spin column is 400mg.For >2% agarose gels, add 6 volumes of Buffer QG.
4. Incubate at 50ºC for 10 minutes (or until the gel has completely dissolved). Vortex the tube every 2-3 minutes during incubation to help dissolve the gel. If color is orange or violet after gel slice has dissolved, add 10µl 3M sodium acetate, pH 5.0. The color of the mixture will turn to yellow.
5. Add 1 gel volume of isopropanol to the sample and mix by inverting.
6. Place a MinElute spin column in a provided 2mL collection tube. Apply the sample in the 2.0mL microcentrifuge tube to the MinElute column and centrifuge for 1 min at 13,000 rpm. Discard the flow-through and place the MinElute column back into the same collection tube. If the sample volume exceeds 800µl, simply reload and spin again.
7. Add 500µl Buffer QG to the MinElute column and centrifuge for 1 minute at 13,000 rpm. Discard flow-through and place the MinElute column back into the same collection tube.
8. Add 750µl Buffer PE to MinElute column and centrifuge for 1 minute at 13,000 rpm. Discard flow-through and place the MinElute column back into the same collection tube. If the DNA will be used for salt-sensitive applications, such as direct sequencing and blunt-ended ligation, let the column stand 2-5 minute after addition of Buffer PE.
9. Centrifuge the column in the 2mL collection tube for 1 minute at 13,000 rpm again to remove residual ethanol.
10. Place each MinElute column into a clean 1.5mL microcentrifuge tube. To elute DNA, add 10µl Buffer EB or water to the center of the MinElute membrane. Let the column stand for 1 minute, and centrifuge the column for 1 minute at 13,000rpm.
11. Repeat step 12 but this time load the flow-through back to the membrane. Let the column stand for 1 minute, and centrifuge the column for 1 minute at 13,000rpm.
12. Check Gel extraction product with Nanodrop

These are the conditions we used to PCR the gBlocks received from IDT. We used Snapgene to design the primers. We used Q5 High-Fideltiy Polymerasefrom New England Biolabs.

Controls

We used TIANquick Mini Purification Kit.