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In the past few weeks, we’ve received over 2,600 COVID19 related plasmid requests. These plasmids have been heading to research labs in 43 countries.

COVID-19 research is happening fast and we’re glad to join these efforts and help scientists through plasmid sharing and more. These include plasmids that have been in the repository for many years, and new plasmids that scientists have deposited in the last several weeks. We've grown the collection of COVID-19 related plasmids to over 500 plasmids and our mission to accelerate research through sharing reagents has never been so important as scientists work around the clock to find solutions for COVID-19. Sharing speeds science.

Primer design. Plasmid mapping. DNA sequence analysis. We all have our favorite tools for tackling these particular tasks, but they tend to be scattered about the internet. To help you keep your virtual molecular biology toolbox organized, today’s post features a list of free online molecular biology tools all in one place.

This post was contributed by Manon Eckhardt and Melanie Brewer from the QBI Coronavirus Research Group at UCSF.

It’s been only a few months since we all became acutely aware of the threat of SARS-CoV-2. Like many in the science community, we’ve been motivated to do anything and everything we can to help find a cure -- and quickly. Normally drug discovery is a process that would take years and millions, if not billions, of dollars, but by approaching it from a new direction, we hope to do it much faster.

Originally published Jan. 14, 2014 and updated Apr. 2, 2020.

Any newcomer who joins a molecular biology lab will undoubtedly be asked to design, modify, or construct a plasmid. A plasmid is a small circular piece of DNA found in bacterial cells, and someone new to plasmids may need some extra guidance to understand the specific components that make up a plasmid and why each is important.

Our “Plasmids 101” series designed to educate all levels of scientists and plasmid lovers - serves as an introduction to plasmids. Plasmids 101 will provide you with an overview of general molecular biology knowledge and techniques, and empower you with a firm understanding of the fundamentals. Our mission is to curate a one-stop reference guide for plasmids, so that you can spend less time researching the basics and spend more time developing cleverly designed experiments and innovative solutions necessary for advancing the field.

Plasmid incompatibility is defined as the inability of different plasmids to be maintained in one bacterial cell. In this Plasmids 101 post, we’ll cover why this happens, how it might affect your work, and how understanding it can be used for good. 

First, why are plasmids incompatible? Plasmid incompatibility occurs when multiple plasmids within one cell have the same replicon and/or partitioning system. Let’s start with the replicon- the part of the plasmid that contains the origin of replication and the replication control machinery (Need a refresher on the Origin of Replication? See our Plasmids 101: Origin of Replication blog).