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Fast, cheap and under control

Nature Methods volume 2, page 318 (2005)Cite this article

Scientists have known since the early 1960s that it was possible to 'persuade' mammalian cells to take up foreign DNA—the difficult part has been getting this to happen with any sort of efficiency or reliability.

A major break came in the late 1960s, when several papers from the lab of Joseph Pagano demonstrated that the positively charged polymer DEAE-dextran, when combined and complexed with viral RNA or DNA, profoundly improved the uptake of these nucleic acids by cultured monkey kidney cells1,2. This technique considerably enhanced the quality of Pagano's viral preparations and represented a major leap forward—this system is still used today, to some extent—but it had several liabilities. Among other shortcomings, DEAE-dextran can be highly toxic to cells, the foreign DNA is vulnerable to environmental nucleases, and the method is limited exclusively to use in transient transfections, in which the cells being manipulated will express the gene of interest only temporarily.

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Authors
  1. Michael Eisenstein
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Eisenstein, M. Fast, cheap and under control. Nat Methods 2, 318 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0405-318

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