Materials and Reagents
- Recipient strain [ATCC2001, HTL or clinical isolates (Schwarzmuller et al., 2014)]
- DNA deletion construct/transforming DNA
- Sterile water (double distilled)
- Bacto™ peptone (BD Biosciences, catalog number: 211820 )
- Bacto™ yeast extract (BD Biosciences, catalog number: 212720 )
- Bacto™ agar (BD Biosciences, catalog number: 214030 )
- Glucose (Merck KGaA, catalog number: 108337 )
- Lithium acetate dehydrate (LiAc) (Sigma-Aldrich, catalog number: L6883 )
- Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (Sigma-Aldrich, catalog number: 472301 )
- Polyethylene glycol (PEG 3350) (Sigma-Aldrich, catalog number: P4338 )
- Nourseothricin-dihydrogen sulfate (Werner BioAgents, catalog number: 5.0 )
- ssDNA (Sigma-Aldrich, catalog number: D1626 )
- YPD media (see Recipes)
- Solid selective media (see Recipes)
Equipment
- Deep well plate (96-well) (Nunc®, catalog number: 732-2662 )
- Reservoir (autoclavable) (VWR International, catalog number: 6130466 )
- Multichannel pipette (200 µl) (Brandt Transferpette, WU2160016)
- Culture flasks with baffles
- Centrifuge (50 ml tubes) (Eppendorf, catalog number: 5702R )
- Centrifuge (1.5 ml tubes) (Eppendorf, catalog number: 5417R )
- Rotary shaker for culture flasks (New Brunswick Scientific, catalog number: innova44 )
Procedure
- Culture preparation
- Grow background strains overnight in YPD media at 30 °C with shaking in flasks at 160 rpm.
- Dilute the culture into fresh YPD medium to an OD600 of about 0.3, and regrow until an OD600 of 1.5 is reached (for 96-well heat shock transformations, 600 ml of culture are required).
- Harvest cultures in 50 ml Falcon tubes by centrifugation at 1,000 x g for 5 min.
- Treatment of cells
- Wash cell pellets twice with 25 ml of sterile water, centrifuge and discard supernatants. Resuspend cell pellets gently in 1 ml of 100 mM LiAc.
- Combine all cell suspensions from one strain in two 50 ml tubes.
- After centrifugation at 1,000 x g for 30 sec, add the following sterile solution for each 50 ml of cells grown in step 1 in the order they are listed:
1,920 µl 50 % PEG-3350
400 µl ssDNA (10 mg/ml; heat-denatured)
288 µl of 1 M LiAc
- Gently resuspend cells by aspirating with a pipette.
- Heat-shock
96-well scale
- Prior to preparing competent cells, place 50 µl of transformation DNA constructs at the bottom of wells of a deep well plate.
- Add 326 µl of cell suspension to each well and mix gently by aspiration with a multi-channel or single-channel pipette. Seal the plate using a breathable adhesive foil.
- Incubate plates for 30 min at 30 °C in an incubator without shaking.
- Add 45 µl of DMSO and mix immediately by aspirating with a pipette.
- Incubate plates at 42 °C in an incubator without shaking for exactly 15 min.
- Centrifuge plates at 1,000 x g for 5 min and remove supernatants.
- Add 950 µl of YPD media and gently resuspend fungal cells by aspirating with a pipette.
Single-well scale
- Add 326 µl of the cell suspension to a 1.5 ml tube containing 50 µl transformation DNA constructs and gently mix by aspirating.
- Incubate tubes at 30 °C for 30 min. Add 45 µl of DMSO and mix immediately.
- Incubate tubes at 42 °C for exactly 15 min without agitation.
- Sediment cells by centrifugation at 1,000 x g for 5 min and remove supernatants by aspiration.
- Add 950 µl of YPD medium and gently resuspend cells.
- Regeneration of cells
- Incubate microtiter plates or tubes at 30 °C for 1 to 4 h at 30 °C without shaking.
- Afterwards, centrifuge tubes or plates at 1,000 x g for 5 min.
- Discard supernatants and resuspend cell pellets in 100 µl of sterile water.
- Plate cell suspensions on selective medium and incubate the plates at 30 °C for a few days until colonies become visible.
Notes
- This transformation protocol was optimized for C. glabrata ATCC2001 and all derived strains, as well as for clinical isolates of C. glabrata.
- The speed of rotary shaker depends on the type of culture flasks used. Flasks without baffles require higher shaking speeds around about 220 rpm for good oxygenation.
- Handle cells VERY gently after adding LiAc (no vortex-mixing!) and keep them on ice. Add the LiAc after adding sterile water and TE buffer (this automatically dilutes the LiAc to the appropriate concentration).
- In section “Procedure” we mention that cell pellets should be resuspended carefully by pipetting. For this step we recommend a manual 1,000 µl pipette. By slow aspiration and release the cell pellet can be gently resuspended.
- The required regeneration time depends on the selective marker. We experienced that transformants with a HIS3 marker can be plated after 1 h, while those with a NAT1 marker may require up to 4 h of regeneration.
- The ssDNA solution is prepared according to the manual described in Molecular cloning (Sambrook and Russell, 2001). Each aliquot is heated to 95 °C for 5 min and immediately cooled on ice before use.
Recipes
- YPD media (yeast extract peptone dextrose)
25 g/LBacto ™ peptone
12.5 g/LBacto ™ yeast extract
2% glucose
- Solid selective media (nourseothricin)
25 g/LBacto™ peptone
12.5 g/LBacto™ yeast extract
2% glucose
2% agar
0.2 g/Lnourseothricin
Acknowledgments
We thank Suzanne Noble and Alexander Johnson for their advice in setting up the heat-shock deletion workflow for gene deletion in the 96-well format (Noble and Johnson, 2005). This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF through the ERA-Net Pathogenomics project FunPath (FWF-API-0125), and in part by grants from the Christian Doppler Society, the FP7 EC project FUNGITECT, the Marie-Curie ITN ImResFun (MC-ITN-606786) and the FWF Project FWF-P25333 "Chromatin" to KK.
References
- Noble, S. M. and Johnson, A. D. (2005). Strains and strategies for large-scale gene deletion studies of the diploid human fungal pathogen Candida albicans. Eukaryot Cell 4(2): 298-309.
- Schwarzmuller, T., Ma, B., Hiller, E., Istel, F., Tscherner, M., Brunke, S., Ames, L., Firon, A., Green, B., Cabral, V., Marcet-Houben, M., Jacobsen, I. D., Quintin, J., Seider, K., Frohner, I., Glaser, W., Jungwirth, H., Bachellier-Bassi, S., Chauvel, M., Zeidler, U., Ferrandon, D., Gabaldon, T., Hube, B., d'Enfert, C., Rupp, S., Cormack, B., Haynes, K. and Kuchler, K. (2014). Systematic phenotyping of a large-scale Candida glabrata deletion collection reveals novel antifungal tolerance genes. PLoS Pathog 10(6): e1004211.
- Sambrook, J. and Russell, D. W. (2001). Molecular cloning: A laboratory manual. 3rd edition, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA
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Category
Microbiology > Microbial genetics > Transformation
Molecular Biology > DNA > Transformation