Can you store bacteria for ligation? - (Aug/02/2005 )
Hi,
before plating, I add SOC to ligation mix plus competent cells and incubate at 37C for 1h.
Does anyone know if I can store the left-over of bacteria more than several hours?
Sometimes I plate too much bacteria on plates and get too many colonies. In that case, I'd like to plate again the next day so I can get colonies well separated from each other.
Thanks.
Hey it looks like u have highly efficient compcells!!! U can try plating neat...
You can begin with plating 2 amounts of bacteria on your plates, for instance if you have 300 µl of SOC plate 200 and 50 µl (on separate plates of course 
). Apart from that I think it should be possible to store your bacteria @ 4°C overnight.
If you think that you might have too many transformants then just spread 40µl of water on a second plate and using your hockey stick after the plating your cells (obviously do this before flaming 
). Enough cells will have stuck to the hockey stick to give you individual colonies on the second plate.
Daniel
DNA sequencing software
Thanks, guys.
slab
slab
No problem, I have tried that, the bacteria can be store a couple of days , they still grow very well.