Priority
🔴 Urgent — Competent cell quality is the most common failure point reported by network members attempting to transform plasmids sent through Reclone. This directly undermines the usability and impact of the collection.
Problem
Members receiving plasmids from the Reclone network frequently fail to transform them successfully, and the root cause is most often poor-quality or inconsistently-made competent cells — not the DNA itself. There is currently no standardized protocol, no efficiency benchmark, and no shared quality-control reference strain across the network.
Proposed Solution
Establish a standardized, well-documented competent cell workflow for the network:
- A validated protocol for making competent cells (with a documented fallback method)
- A transformation efficiency test using pUC19 as a QC standard
- A defined go/no-go efficiency threshold so members can self-diagnose before troubleshooting downstream
Scope of this issue
This is a tracking issue. Work is broken into the sub-issues below.
Sub-issues
Definition of done
Priority
🔴 Urgent — Competent cell quality is the most common failure point reported by network members attempting to transform plasmids sent through Reclone. This directly undermines the usability and impact of the collection.
Problem
Members receiving plasmids from the Reclone network frequently fail to transform them successfully, and the root cause is most often poor-quality or inconsistently-made competent cells — not the DNA itself. There is currently no standardized protocol, no efficiency benchmark, and no shared quality-control reference strain across the network.
Proposed Solution
Establish a standardized, well-documented competent cell workflow for the network:
Scope of this issue
This is a tracking issue. Work is broken into the sub-issues below.
Sub-issues
Definition of done