First-Stage Plasmid (Transcriptional Unit) Assembly

Once you have all your desired part plasmids built you can assemble them into Transcriptional units (TU). Typically these plasmids will be assembled with part plasmids for promoter + RBS, coding sequence, terminator, and TU specific connectors; variations on this basic strategy are easily managed though as long as the requisite overhangs are present (Described here).

Assembly reaction

Total volume will be 20 μL; you will need 10 fmol of each part plasmid for this assembly. Typically the pBTK095 part plasmid (ColE1 origin, sfGFP dropout) is used as the backbone for this assembly. If toxicity issues may be a factor, lower copy number vectors can easily be used in its place.

• 10 fmol of each part plasmid
• 2 μL of 10× T4 DNA ligase buffer
• 1 μL of BsaI
• 1 μL of T4 DNA ligase
• x μL water up to 20 μL total.

Mix samples well by pipetting, then run the reaction on the thermocycler under the following conditions:

• Transform 2 μL assembly reaction and plate on LB + Carb (alternate backbones may have alternate antibiotic resistances!)

Due to the nature of attempting to assemble a high number of plasmids in one reaction there are often issues that arise: Check out troubleshooting tips here