500,000 Plasmids Shipped and Counting!

By Caroline LaManna

Caroline LaManna March 26, 2015

Yesterday we hit a huge milestone here at Addgene – 500,000 plasmids shipped! That's a 1/2 million plasmids sent to happy scientists around the world in ~10 years!

We're extremely proud to be able to support scientists by bringing you all the plasmids you need. We're focused on our mission – documenting your plasmids, storing them, providing quality control and customer support, making plasmids easy for you to find and request in our online collection, and shipping them to you quickly.

Cake to celebrate Addgene having shipped 500,000 plasmids.

So, what does plasmid shipping look like at Addgene?

Here's an inside peak into the daily workings in Addgene's lab. We ship individual plasmids as transformed bacteria in stab culture format. Our lab team creates stabs for each plasmid being shipped based on the information in our lab software, labeling stabs with barcodes as they go. Stabs are organized by shipment and moved to our packing area.Using the barcode system, the correct plasmids are packed into their boxes with shipping labels and paperwork. Our stacks of Addgene boxes are now ready to be sent around the world...

Photo depicting Addgene's plasmid shipping process.

Where did 500,000 plasmids go?

Far and wide – that's where! Check out the map below which depicts where plasmids have been shipped to. Plasmids start out at our Cambridge office – previously at 1 Kendall Square, but newly relocated to 75 Sidney Street. Then the plasmids travel to labs around the world.

We've shipped plasmids to more than 90,000 scientists at 5,200 institutions in 82 different countries.

World map of locations Addgene has shipped plasmids. Current as of January 2015.

We continue to ship out more plasmids each year, as shown in the graph below. From our humble beginnings in 2004 to today, you can see how plasmid distribution has grown. Additionally, more and more scientists outside of the US now use the repository – about 50% of plasmids are shipped to labs outside of the US.

We are so excited to continue to improve access for scientists everywhere to get the tools they need to progress their research.

Graph of cumulative US and non-US distribution of plasmids up to March 2015. Initially non-US distribution made up less than half of all distributions, but increases in number until 2015 where non-US and US distributions are about equal.

*2015 total reflects the number of distributed plasmids as of March 26, 2015.

How does Addgene make it happen?

Our awesome team of Addgenies! Our team recently grew big enough to necessitate an office move. We've got ~50 Addgenies working to ship plasmids, analyze QC sequence, answer scientists' questions, manage our website, and continue to improve the repository. We love being able to provide a useful (and growing) resource for our favorite people – you, our scientists!

Photo of Addgene staff in their new office in 2015.

Thank you for being part of our growing community!

Our plasmid repository succeeds because of our amazing community. The trust of our depositors to allow us to help store and distribute their plasmids. The partnerships and collaborations with institutions and tech transfer offices that facilitate MTAs. The great feedback from scientists who request plasmids and use our molecular biology protocols and resources. The great comments from our blog readers. You all drive Addgene to succeed and to improve, so thank you.

500,000x Thank You!

Addgene's new location:

75 Sidney St, Suite 550A, Cambridge, MA 02139

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