How to get Plasmids?

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betanic

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May 5, 2020, 1:45:40 AM5/5/20
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I was very excited to stumble on addgene and see the plethora of plasmids they have available, then to my disspointment I find they only sell to nonprofits. I am an individual researcher, are there any similar services that I can obtain some plasmids? When I go to thermo fisher for the same plasmids, they charge about $600 for the same thing.... If anyone has suggestions or can help here that would be great. (I'm in the USA by the way)

Dakota Hamill

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May 5, 2020, 2:51:25 AM5/5/20
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Welcome to (barely) open science where the plasmids come with a legal binder and the "lab grade tweezers" are $79 from Fischer Sci and $1 at CVS.   AddGene is like an Ivory Clubhouse outside of the Ivory Tower that you're still not invited to.   Don't fret though, many of us aren't invited. 

Depends on the plasmid you want in regards to alternative sources. 

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 1:45 AM betanic <balp...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was very excited to stumble on addgene and see the plethora of plasmids they have available, then to my disspointment I find they only sell to nonprofits. I am an individual researcher, are there any similar services that I can obtain some plasmids? When I go to thermo fisher for the same plasmids, they charge about $600 for the same thing.... If anyone has suggestions or can help here that would be great. (I'm in the USA by the way)

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John Griessen

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May 5, 2020, 5:19:34 AM5/5/20
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On 5/5/20 12:36 AM, betanic wrote:
> If anyone has suggestions or can help here that would be great.

Maybe the effort of forming a non-profit would be worth it for you.

I'm thinking seriously about starting a non-profit corp and being its main person on the payroll. Why would I need more money
than a non-profit board of directors would approve as a salary? A non-profits mission of education and products that are tools
for research is what I have been doing anyway... It sure would help the development phase of any of my projects to be able to
ask for donations that are tax deductible...

Hans Wilms

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May 6, 2020, 4:40:55 PM5/6/20
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Just out of curiosity, does anyone know WHY most biotech companies don't sell to private residences? You can typically get them shipped to any business address no problem. Is it a liability thing, or is there some law stating these companies can't sell to individuals?

Also, botanic, try the ODIN. They have some plasmids, but not nearly anything near the collection of Addgene.

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jerry maxwell

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May 6, 2020, 5:25:39 PM5/6/20
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I work for a biotech company and we don't have any problem selling to private residences. It does cost more to ship to a private residence (what with liftgate truck and access problems), which I would guess is why some companies won't ship to them. But my company does and I'd be willing to bet 1/3 of our sales are to private individuals. Our main problem, being a reseller in the biotech business, is that the big companies such as Thermo and Agilent will not sell to us or our customers even though it's their equipment we are selling. Even when we give them the rights to service and parts sales. They tend to be very greedy and seriously overcharge their customers. It can be quite a hassle sometimes fighting their monopoly on the right of sales, software and service of fairly common used instruments. It doesn't make sense. We're just trying to do right for the customers, and if they would loosen their restrictive policies it would make life for the customers and us little companies much easier and affordable. And it wouldn't hurt their bottom line at all...        Jerry, Certified Scientific, California.

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Bryan Jones

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May 7, 2020, 11:05:24 AM5/7/20
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Researchers often are willing to share plasmids that they have, so try asking someone who has the plasmid. 
--Bryan Jones


To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAJv1kTWNFW1yxJrvQdGdDnu_Txpdbc_BCLHjMu_gtNAHgj9qyA%40mail.gmail.com.

Nathan McCorkle

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May 7, 2020, 9:08:55 PM5/7/20
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On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 8:05 AM Bryan Jones <bryan...@gmail.com> wrote:
Researchers often are willing to share plasmids that they have, so try asking someone who has the plasmid. 
--Bryan Jones

Back in college I found a paper from a Japanese research group, I was interested in their plasmid and emailed the person. I was really (pleasantly) surprised that I got some DNA weeks or months later, no charge, no request for reimbursement.

betanic

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May 8, 2020, 1:23:57 AM5/8/20
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A lot of people suggesting I just ask the research group. Well my only experience with that so far, I have asked a professor and he basically said MTA's take 6 months and I should just use Addgene (after stating that Im asking because addgene won't sell to individuals) so I take that as a "f* you". Also I'd like a more reliable method of getting plasmids


On Thursday, May 7, 2020 at 10:05:24 AM UTC-5, Bryan Jones wrote:
Researchers often are willing to share plasmids that they have, so try asking someone who has the plasmid. 
--Bryan Jones


On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 4:25 PM jerry maxwell <jerrymax...@gmail.com> wrote:
I work for a biotech company and we don't have any problem selling to private residences. It does cost more to ship to a private residence (what with liftgate truck and access problems), which I would guess is why some companies won't ship to them. But my company does and I'd be willing to bet 1/3 of our sales are to private individuals. Our main problem, being a reseller in the biotech business, is that the big companies such as Thermo and Agilent will not sell to us or our customers even though it's their equipment we are selling. Even when we give them the rights to service and parts sales. They tend to be very greedy and seriously overcharge their customers. It can be quite a hassle sometimes fighting their monopoly on the right of sales, software and service of fairly common used instruments. It doesn't make sense. We're just trying to do right for the customers, and if they would loosen their restrictive policies it would make life for the customers and us little companies much easier and affordable. And it wouldn't hurt their bottom line at all...        Jerry, Certified Scientific, California.

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 1:40 PM Hans Wilms <hanst...@gmail.com> wrote:
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know WHY most biotech companies don't sell to private residences? You can typically get them shipped to any business address no problem. Is it a liability thing, or is there some law stating these companies can't sell to individuals?

Also, botanic, try the ODIN. They have some plasmids, but not nearly anything near the collection of Addgene.

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 2:19 AM John Griessen <jo...@industromatic.com> wrote:
On 5/5/20 12:36 AM, betanic wrote:
> If anyone has suggestions or can help here that would be great.

Maybe the effort of forming a non-profit would be worth it for you.

I'm thinking seriously about starting a non-profit corp and being its main person on the payroll.  Why would I need more money
than a non-profit board of directors would approve as a salary?  A non-profits mission of education and products that are tools
for research is what I have been doing anyway...   It sure would help the development phase of any of my projects to be able to
ask for donations that are tax deductible...

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-Hans T. Wilms
Cell: 404-322-5824

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Koeng

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May 8, 2020, 1:30:21 AM5/8/20
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FreeGenes has been working on some gene sets, but they might not be that useful to you - (http://stanford.freegenes.org/, password: freegenes). We got a lot of MoClo compatible full genome sets, and have begun working on toolkits for individual organisms now that we've figured out processing, quality control, etc. Operations turn out to be, hard-ish? I wish we had better toolkits, and we should by now, but that's just how it is. Sorry, we're working on it.

We give away all our gene sets for free (so long as you're not shady as hell, but that's a Stanford liability thing). We also pioneered the OpenMTA, which was recently adopted by Addgene (https://help.addgene.org/hc/en-us/articles/360042153872-What-is-the-OpenMTA-), in hopes to get around that stupid "legal binder" (all our genes can be used commercially and redistributed freely). We also have a version of the OpenMTA that is unilateral to eliminate all that stupid MTA signing. 

We have OpenEnzyme which might be interesting - has 44 useful off-patent enzymes, like ligases, polymerases, and restriction enzymes. All free, though they're not in expression vectors (nearly everything we make is MoClo compatible). We're also distributing a COVID-19 diagnostic toolkit, which has ready-to-use expression vectors for making the enzymes necessary to do COVID-19 tests, and we've shipped about 30 of those to 6 continents (not THAT many, but still pretty ok). 

A lot of our kits I've been trying to ship to local biohacker spaces with multiple copies so they can get and share forward, eliminating the need for those centralized supply chains. We're being very comprehensive with each organism toolkit we build, so you'll be able to do virtually anything with a smallish amount of parts. Still limited by Twist's failure rate but oh well. 

Hope you can find plasmids you need




On Monday, May 4, 2020 at 11:51:25 PM UTC-7, Dakota Hamill wrote:
Welcome to (barely) open science where the plasmids come with a legal binder and the "lab grade tweezers" are $79 from Fischer Sci and $1 at CVS.   AddGene is like an Ivory Clubhouse outside of the Ivory Tower that you're still not invited to.   Don't fret though, many of us aren't invited. 

Depends on the plasmid you want in regards to alternative sources. 

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 1:45 AM betanic <balp...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was very excited to stumble on addgene and see the plethora of plasmids they have available, then to my disspointment I find they only sell to nonprofits. I am an individual researcher, are there any similar services that I can obtain some plasmids? When I go to thermo fisher for the same plasmids, they charge about $600 for the same thing.... If anyone has suggestions or can help here that would be great. (I'm in the USA by the way)

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Yogesh Taparia

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May 8, 2020, 3:26:16 AM5/8/20
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Can you mention the plasmids with link to addgene that you are looking for, maybe someone might have it in this community.

Dude, if you ask in US, sadly this is the kind of response you will get always.

Ask someone outside US preferably in Europe or South America who have used this plasmid and they are more than willing to help. I have gotten about 13-14 plasmids for my PhD work just like this.

Best,
Yogesh

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John Griessen

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May 8, 2020, 11:39:27 AM5/8/20
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On 5/8/20 12:30 AM, Koeng wrote:
> A lot of our kits I've been trying to ship to local biohacker spaces with multiple copies so they can get and share forward,
> eliminating the need for those centralized supply chains. We're being very comprehensive with each organism toolkit we build, so
> you'll be able to do virtually anything with a smallish amount of parts. Still limited by Twist's failure rate but oh well.

Please tell us more about how you are making toolkits. Are you asking twistbioscience to synthesize plasmids in kit production
quantities? What would it take to "grow more" without more laborious hand work doing it? I'm thinking lab automation...

Koeng

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May 8, 2020, 12:27:22 PM5/8/20
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I ask Twist to synthesize plasmids for us, and then produce 2ug-10ug of DNA for each plasmid for us. All the actual kit building is done on OT2 robots. The most labor intensive part, so far, has been applying the labels to the plates.

Tom De Medts

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May 8, 2020, 3:14:08 PM5/8/20
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Koeng et al.,

Any chances of your "Open Reporter Collection" becoming available again?
https://stanford.freegenes.org/collections/all/products/open-reporter-collection

The page says it is currently SOLD OUT (as visible from a screenshot of the same).
Screen Shot 2020-05-08 at 3.13.23 PM.png

Thank you!
TdM


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