What’s In A Kit?
Occasionally I’ll buy a kit and there isn’t much information available about the included reagents. However in a recent email from Stratagene I noticed a link which led me to the following information about one of their most popular kits.
Stratagene’s Quickchange Mutagenesis Kit:
Contains: PfuUltra™ High Fidelity DNA polymerase, 10X reaction buffer, dNTP mix, Dpn I restriction enzyme, QuikChange control plasmid and control primers, XL-1 supercompetent cells, pUC18 control plasmid.
Save yourself some money and buy the reagents individually. There really isn’t any reason to pay an inflated price for some pUC18 and competent cells.
PS:I have never bought competent cells that transformed with a higher efficiency than those I made in the lab. On the rare occasion I’ve needed supercompetent cells I made electrocompetent cells (wash bacteria in water-how hard is that?).
Good luck and happy mutating!
Posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 8:29 pm Categorized as:General You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Epiphany…
Hal has had a revelation. Stratagene’s QuikChange Mutagenesis Kit: Contains: PfuUltra™ High Fidelity DNA polymerase, 10X reaction buffer, dNTP mix, Dpn I restriction enzyme, QuikChange control plasmid and control primers, XL-1 supercompetent cells,…
November 30th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
What about the dNTP mix? On the FAQ section of Stratagene’s website, they say that the concentration of the mix is “considered proprietary information.” And people I’ve talked to have said they had no luck using any other dNTP mixture than the one included in the kit. Any tips?
December 1st, 2006 at 12:20 am
The NTP concentration is proprietary? That is funny. Use the same concentration you would for normal PCR. The dNTPs (25mM=100x stock, final concentration 250uM) don’t know they are amplifying a circular plasmid. I promise.