Generation of Chemically Compentent E coli for Plasmid transformation
Note: This is a screen scrape of the openwetware protocol from May 2021.
This protocol is a variant of the Hanahan protocol [1] using CCMB80 buffer for DH10B, TOP10 and MachI strains. It builds on Example 2 of the Bloom05 patent as well. This protocol has been tested on TOP10, MachI and BL21(DE3) cells. See Bacterial Transformation for a more general discussion of other techniques. The Jesse '464 patent describes using this buffer for DH5α cells. The Bloom04 patent describes the use of essentially the same protocol for the Invitrogen Mach 1 cells.
This is the chemical transformation protocol used by Tom Knight and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
Materials
Detergent-free, sterile glassware and plasticware (see procedure)
Table-top OD600nm spectrophotometer
CCMB80 buffer
10 mM KOAc pH 7.0 (10 ml of a 1M stock/L)
80 mM CaCl2.2H2O (11.8 g/L)
20 mM MnCl2.4H2O (4.0 g/L)
10 mM MgCl2.6H2O (2.0 g/L)
10% glycerol (100 ml/L)
adjust pH DOWN to 6.4 with 0.1N HCl if necessary
adjusting pH up will precipitate manganese dioxide from Mn containing solutions.
sterile filter and store at 4°C
slight dark precipitate appears not to affect its function
Note: you can buy pre-made CCMB80 buffer from Teknova
Procedure
Preparing glassware and media
Eliminating detergent
Detergent is a major inhibitor of competent cell growth and transformation. Glass and plastic must be detergent free for these protocols. The easiest way to do this is to avoid washing glassware, and simply rinse it out. Autoclaving glassware filled 3/4 with DI water is an effective way to remove most detergent residue. Media and buffers should be prepared in detergent free glassware and cultures grown up in detergent free glassware.
Prechill plasticware and glassware
Prechill 250mL centrifuge tubes and screw cap tubes before use.
Preparing seed stocks
Streak TOP10 cells on an SOB plate and grow for single colonies at 23°C
room temperature works well
Pick single colonies into 2 ml of SOB medium and shake overnight at 23°C
room temperature works well
Add glycerol to 15%
Aliquot 1 ml samples to Nunc cryotubes
Place tubes into a zip lock bag, immerse bag into a dry ice/ethanol bath for 5 minutes
This step may not be necessary
Place in -80°C freezer indefinitely.
Preparing competent cells
Inoculate 250 ml of SOB medium with 1 ml vial of seed stock and grow at 20°C to an OD600nm of 0.3
This takes approximately 16 hours.
Controlling the temperature makes this a more reproducible process, but is not essential.
Room temperature will work. You can adjust this temperature somewhat to fit your schedule
Aim for lower, not higher OD if you can't hit this mark
Centrifuge at 3000rpm at 4°C for 10 minutes in a flat bottom centrifuge bottle.
Flat bottom centrifuge tubes make the fragile cells much easier to resuspend
It is often easier to resuspend pellets by mixing before adding large amounts of buffer
Discard supernatant by pouring out slowly and pipeting remaining supernatent
Gently resuspend in 80 ml of ice cold CCMB80 buffer
sometimes this is less than completely gentle. It still works.
Incubate on ice 20 minutes
Centrifuge again at 4°C and discard supernatant as described above.
Resuspend in 10 ml of ice cold CCMB80 buffer.
Test OD of a mixture of 200 μl SOC and 50 μl of the resuspended cells.
Add chilled CCMB80 to yield a final OD of 1.0-1.5 in this test.
Aliquot to chilled screw top 2 ml vials or 50 μl into chilled microtiter plates
Store at -80°C indefinitely.
Flash freezing does not appear to be necessary
Test competence (see below)
Thawing and refreezing partially used cell aliquots dramatically reduces transformation efficiency by about 3x the first time, and about 6x total after several freeze/thaw cycles.
Measurement of competence
Transform 50 μl of cells with 1 μl of standard pUC19 plasmid (Invitrogen)
This is at 10 pg/μl or 10-5 μg/μl
This can be made by diluting 1 μl of NEB pUC19 plasmid (1 μg/μl, NEB part number N3401S) into 100 ml of TE
Hold on ice 0.5 hours
Heat shock 60 sec at 42C
Add 250 μl SOC
Incubate at 37 C for 1 hour in 2 ml centrifuge tubes rotated
using 2ml centrifuge tubes for transformation and regrowth works well because the small volumes flow well when rotated, increasing aeration.
For our plasmids (pSB1AC3, pSB1AT3) which are chloramphenicol and tetracycline resistant, we find growing for 2 hours yields many more colonies
Ampicillin and kanamycin appear to do fine with 1 hour growth
Plate 20 μl on AMP plates using sterile 3.5 mm glass beads
Good cells should yield around 100 - 400 colonies
Transformation efficiency is (dilution factor=15) x colony count x 105/µgDNA
We expect that the transformation efficiency should be between 5x108 and 5x109 cfu/µgDNA