You put a culture of cells on the shaker at 37°C. You had intended to come into lab the next day to harvest the cells and purify plasmid DNA from them. Instead, you wake up the next day with the flu. You are home for 2 days with a fever and chills. When you drag yourself back into lab, 3 days after you put the culture on the shaker, you check your cells. You have a dense growth and an OD600 greater than 1.0. Should you attempt to purify the plasmid DNA from this culture?

Question

Biology

Olson

11 June, 19:20

You put a culture of cells on the shaker at 37°C. You had intended to come into lab the next day to harvest the cells and purify plasmid DNA from them. Instead, you wake up the next day with the flu. You are home for 2 days with a fever and chills. When you drag yourself back into lab, 3 days after you put the culture on the shaker, you check your cells. You have a dense growth and an OD600 greater than 1.0. Should you attempt to purify the plasmid DNA from this culture?

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Gracie Bridges · Answer 1

In this situation, we should not attempt to purify DNA from this culture. When you incubate culture on a shaker for more than a day, cells keep growing and result in dense growth. The colonies become clustered due to longer incubation on shaking making it difficult to purify plasmid DNA from densely-grown cells.