use of miniprep DNA for transfection - (Oct/16/2006 )

Hi,

can you use a miniprep DNA for transfection experiments. If not, why is that so? If yes, is the transfection efficiency equal to that of maxiprep DNA?

thank u.

have a nice day

SY

that depends on how your prep your minis actually.
Both methods (mini and maxi) do follow the same principles.
However, some lines might be sensitive to endotoxins you still might have in your mini and maxi prep; therefore some kits offer endotoxin-free maxipreps.
In my former lab we had it once with a cell line that the endotoxin-free prep worked better than the non-endotoxin-free; this might just be the case for some few lines... .

Good luck
Cheers

If transfection efficiency is the same.. I know a guy that would prefer doing 30 minis instead of one maxi.
For me maxi is better because I get more DNA for more transfections

Hi,

can you use a miniprep DNA for transfection experiments. If not, why is that so? If yes, is the transfection efficiency equal to that of maxiprep DNA?

thank u.

have a nice day

SY

also depends on the amount of DNA required to perform a successful transformation. One of my labmate uses 1mg of DNA.... that amount of DNA can not be extracted from minipreps.

And there is also unstable DNA... a former labmate had an unstable sequence in her plasmid which she could not stabalise in any of the e coli strains we have. So she did lots of minipreps instead of a single midiprep... to get around that problem.

thanks for the replies. I used the Qiagen miniprep and maxiprep kits for my DNA.

have a nice day