Biology:DH5-Alpha Cell

From HandWiki

DH5-Alpha Cells are E. coli cells engineered by American biologist Douglas Hanahan to maximize transformation efficiency. They are defined by three[1] mutations: recA1, endA1 which help plasmid insertion and lacZΔM15 which enables blue white screening. The cells are competent and often used with calcium chloride transformation to insert the desired plasmid. A study of four transformation methods and six bacteria strains showed that the most efficient one was the DH5 strain with the Hanahan method.[2]

Mutations

  • The recA1 mutation is a single point mutation that replaces glycine 160 of the recA polypeptide with an aspartic acid residue[3] in order to disable the activity of the recombinases and inactivate homologous recombination.
  • The endA1 mutation inactivates an intracellular endonuclease to prevent it from degrading the inserted plasmid.[4]

References