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Good bye 2020! What a year it has been for all of us. As we eagerly await 2021, we've looked back on the year would like to highlight some of the top articles from the Addgene blog this year. Spoiler alert: many of the top 10 posts from this year were influenced by COVID-19 and our new cloning grade DNA service.

We've had 11 blog posts on COVID-19 featuring plasmid tools from depositors who quickly shared their reagents: detection methods, synthetic nanobodies, SARS-CoV-2 protein expression, and more. We also highlighted reagent repositories and other collaborative efforts in the scientific community to speed COVID-19 research. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the need to expand reagent sharing even broader and began working with tech transfer offices to make reagents available to scientists in both academia and industry.

This year, we also launched the cloning grade DNA service. This service features 210 plasmids: empty backbones, fluorescent protein tags, SARS-CoV-2 plasmids, etc. It is our hope that by providing cloning grade DNA to you, we'd save you days of time so that you can begin your cloning experiment right away.

And without further ado, here are the top ten!

🎶 On the 12 days of CRISPR, Addgene gave to me… 🎶

A few years ago we used the #12DaysOfCRIPSR hashtag to share new CRISPR content designed to help you with your CRISPR experiments and to learn about new CRISPR tools. Since the CRISPR field keeps changing, we’ve been updating many of these posts over the last several months.

Now the #12DaysOfCRISPR is back on Twitter where we shared one of these updated blog posts each day.

If you missed it, here’s the recap!

Mark your calendars for November 16-20, 2020 for #DepositorWeek on Twitter! 

That’s today through Friday.

There will be trivia, prizes, and more!

We wanted to take a week to celebrate the scientists who make a big impact in open science. Depositors consistently contribute to our collection so that we can offer the scientific community the latest and greatest plasmid tools! Thank you depositors!

If you’re cloning a plasmid, you’ll need a way to find the needle in the haystack: the one perfect clone that contains the plasmid you’re looking for out of the many cells that don’t. One way to begin the search is by using selection strategies, where only cells that have gained or lost a specific gene survive (ex: antibiotic resistance marker). In a previous blog post, we covered how to use positive and negative selection in plasmid cloning. 

The Rare Genomics Institute BeHEARD (Helping Empower and Accelerate Research Discoveries) Challenge provides grants for rare disease research. This year is our fourth year working with the Rare Genomics Institute by providing plasmid-based tools for rare disease research.

Congratulations to the winners! Below, we highlight their research and how they will use plasmids and viral preps from Addgene to further their work.