Plasmid Prep FAQs

Service Options

Completing the Order Form

Sample Submission

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  • Purified DNA: At least 5 µL of DNA at 200 ng/µL (minimum 100 ng). Additional charge applies.
  • Agar plate: Fresh (<2 days old) plate with single, well-grown and isolated colonies. Customer may indicate the colony (or colonies) to use, if desired.
  • Glycerol stock or media sample: At least 200 µL. We can streak colonies (additional charges apply) for isolation prior to starting the liquid culture, upon request.
  • Cell pellet: Ship frozen on dry ice (directly to us via overnight carrier), with an indication of the culture volume, media used, OD600 at harvest, and cell pellet mass.
  • DNA on filter paper: This format is discouraged – please send as purified, wet DNA in a sealed tube via overnight shipping or a GENEWIZ Dropbox, if available. Additional charge applies.
  • Other samples: Please contact our Technical Support team to discuss custom requirements.
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Please send at least 20 µL for each sequencing reaction using that primer. The primer concentration should be 10 µM.
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Larger plasmids (>10 kb) and plasmids containing toxic or unstable sequences (such as long terminal repeats (LTR) found in viral expression vectors) are likely to produce better results when paired with cell lines engineered to maintain these difficult sequences.

We advise against using standard cloning strains for these plasmids, due to increased risk of lower yield and plasmid instability. We also suggest the selection of additional QC testing to verify unstable or toxic plasmids.

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Please contact our Project Management team at GS@azenta.com or 908.222.0711 ext. 3 with any questions or to discuss your project.

Turnaround Time and Troubleshooting

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  1. Log into your account and view My Orders. From this main menu, you can also see Order Status next to each individual tracking number.
  2. If additional help is needed, please contact our Project Management team at GS@azenta.com, call +49 (0)341 520122–41.
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Upon request, we will store a sample of your starting material or final DNA for up to one year at no additional charge to facilitate subsequent ordering. Please be sure to request this storage in your order comments and include the order tracking number when reordering preps.
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GENEWIZ Project Management stores a sample of your final DNA from a gene synthesis order for up to one year at no additional charge. To order preps from these projects, simply go to the gene synthesis results page, select the construct of interest in the checkbox, and click “submit prep order” to initiate an online plasmid prep order.
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Our internal quality monitoring will trigger the automatic repeat of a plasmid DNA preparation when the yield is below a critical threshold, depending on the anticipated copy number for the plasmid. Yield variance above this threshold could be due to a variety of factors and may be intrinsic to the sample provided.

Plasmid DNA preparation orders are processed by run. For low copy or other low yield plasmids, we recommend ordering a larger preparation scale or multiple preps, depending on the amount of final material required.

To discuss troubleshooting or custom process modifications, please contact our Project Management team at GS@azenta.com, call +49 (0)341 520122–41.

GLP-Level Plasmid Preparation

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Our Quality System is developed in accordance with applicable FDA GLP regulations described in Title 21, Part 58 of the Code of Federal Regulations and EPA GLP regulations described in Title 40, Part 160 of the Code of Federal Regulations. We offer GLP services, including GLP plasmid prep. For more details, please contact us at +49 (0)341 520122–41 or GS@Azenta.com.

AAV Plasmid Preparation

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If your sample contains only truncated ITRs, we can fix the mutation at an additional cost and prep the corrected plasmids. If a mixture of intact and truncated ITRs is present, we can separate the full-length intact ITR sub-population and propagate it.
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Pre-prep QC can be skipped if you provide the tracking number of your AAV-ITR Sanger sequencing order, or the .ab1 files associated with the current aliquot of your samples. Any new transformation and plasmid preparation on your end will require a pre-prep QC.
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Currently, we only accept plasmid DNA. 10 µl at 200-300 ng/µl is recommended (minimum 200 ng/µl) to account for ITR sequencing. Please contact our Project Management team at GS@azenta.com for possible options if you have insufficient sample quantities.
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Final yield is dependent on the copy number of your sample(s) and a minimum yield cannot be guaranteed. Please indicate in the Comments section of the order form if your sample has a low-copy origin of replication (ORI).