SGI-DNA Expands Advanced Protein Expression Product Suite with Vmax™ Express Chemically Competent Cells

Emerging Technologies
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December 12, 2017

LA JOLLA, CA — December 6, 2017 — SGI-DNA Inc., a Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI) company, today announced the launch of Vmax™ Express Chemically Competent Cells throughout the U.S. and Europe. With Vmax™ now available in two formats -- an electrocompetent and chemically competent format -- labs have greater access to this novel host system that can produce twice the biomass and four times the protein versus E. coli. Researchers can obtain purified protein a full day faster than E. coli-based systems, which accelerates timelines for optimizing complex variables in protein discovery.“Many labs have already discovered the benefits of Vmax™ Express, specifically through their ability to obtain larger amounts of recombinant protein in significantly less time,” said Nathan Wood, SGI-DNA president. “Disruption of the E. coli platform progresses with each extension of this advanced product line, and we continue to advance toward a Vmax™ cloning strain that is expected to launch in 2018.”This new chemically competent format has all the advantages of electrocompetent Vmax™ Express, such as compatibility with standard bacterial expression constructs, faster protein expression, and high yields of soluble protein. Vmax™ Express, first introduced in January 2017, was engineered for significant improvement in recombinant protein expression. With multiple advantages over commonly used bacterial expression systems, Vmax™ Express can serve as an E. coli replacement for routine protein expression as well as for manufacturing proteins and biologic drugs.Initially Vmax™ Express cells were only commercially available in an electrocompetent format. However, it was clear that there was a need to bring this novel, high-performance prokaryotic expression system to laboratories without access to an electroporator. To make this possible, SGI-DNA scientists developed methods to make the cells chemically competent resulting in cells that efficiently take up DNA through standard ‘heat shock’ methods for more routine, cost-effective protein expression studies and applications.“By developing Vmax™ Express into a chemically competent cell line with a high transformation efficiency, scientists can now easily transform Vmax™ Express without expensive equipment,” said Matthew Weinstock, lead scientist at Synthetic Genomics. “Adding a chemically competent cell line enables more researchers to transform Vmax™ using a standard heat-shock method in both low and high throughput.”With the expression capabilities of this rationally designed system now commercially available in two formats: electrocompetent and chemically competent, Weinstock’s team is developing Vmax for rapid cloning. The Vmax™ cloning strain, expected to be available in 2018, has an extremely fast doubling time and can shorten the typical E. coli cloning workflow. With a growing demand for accelerated, streamlined, and efficient cloning processes, the anticipated launch of the Vmax™ cloning strain is already generating widespread interest.The peer-reviewed paper describing the development of Vmax™ was published in August 2016 in Nature Methods by Weinstock, Eric D. Hesek, Christopher M. Wilson, and Daniel G. Gibson, Ph.D.Vmax™ Express is for research use only and is not intended for diagnostic uses. It is also available for commercial license. For more information, contact info@sgidna.com.About SGI-DNASGI-DNA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Synthetic Genomics Inc., provides genomic solutions to advance scientific discovery. SGI-DNA’s ever-expanding suite of products, services, reagents, bioinformatics tools and instrumentation enables scientists to discover, design and build novel solutions for basic research, as well as for biomedical and industrial applications. SGI-DNA’s genomic services include cGMP gene synthesis for clinical applications, whole genome sequencing, DNA synthesis, library design, bioinformatics, cell engineering, and plasmid DNA cloning and purification. SGI-DNA’s reagents include a complete suite of Gibson Assembly® and Site-Directed Mutagenesis kits as well as optimized cell lines. To further enable the synthetic biology workflow, SGI-DNA offers the BioXp™ 3200 System. This fully automated genomics workstation allows the creation of double-stranded DNA fragments, automated cloning, as well as Next-Generation Sequencing DNA library preparation. Building on scientific breakthroughs from J. Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith, Clyde Hutchison, Daniel Gibson and their teams, SGI-DNA is committed to reducing barriers associated with synthetic biology. More information is available at www.sgidna.com.SGI-DNA ContactLiz Liner, Synthetic Genomicspr@sgidna.comPhone: 858.433.2213

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