A cautionary tale of cross-contamination among plasmids from commercial suppliers

Many researchers have switched to purchasing their desired plasmids from commercial suppliers to save time and resources, as we did for 17 high-risk human papillomavirus plasmids. To our surprise, they were shown to be cross-contaminated with one another. Comparison between the production schedule a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jinli Sun, Yaping Tian, Yingying Du, Zhenzhen Wang, Guodong Zhao, Yong Ma, Minxue Zheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2020-01-01
Series:BioTechniques
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Online Access:https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/btn-2019-0018
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Summary:Many researchers have switched to purchasing their desired plasmids from commercial suppliers to save time and resources, as we did for 17 high-risk human papillomavirus plasmids. To our surprise, they were shown to be cross-contaminated with one another. Comparison between the production schedule and the pattern of contaminations proved that this contamination occurred during the production process, which was also shown for another two sets of commercial plasmids. Our experience indicates that the absolute purity of plasmids obtained from external sources cannot be guaranteed. Extreme caution should be exercised, especially when such plasmids are used for human gene therapies and DNA vaccines, where even a minute amount of contamination may pose significant risks to patients.
ISSN:0736-6205
1940-9818